Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-05-Speech-4-161"
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"en.20010705.8.4-161"2
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"Mr President, for many people, Vietnam would appear to be a long way away. But here, for example, sits Mr Mayer, who represents Lower Bavaria, one of the most upwardly mobile regions at the heart of Europe. One might even say that Lower Bavaria borders on Vietnam, because if you go from Lower Bavaria across the Czech border to Bohemia, you will see huge Vietnamese markets, with all that this implies in the border area. This shows how many waves of refugees have left Vietnam for central Europe and Europe as a whole over the last thirty years and it shows how small the world has become and how closely everything hangs together.
During the last plenary session, Mr Modrow of the Social Democrat Party spoke about the huge crimes committed in Asia in the twentieth century by Germany, the USA and Japan. He apparently completely forgot, however, that the worst crimes in Asia in the twentieth century were committed by Communists, namely the Khmer Rouge, namely Stalin and Lenin in the east of the Soviet Union, in China and, last but not least, in Vietnam, where people were persecuted for decades after the horrific Vietnam War and still are persecuted. Vietnam is a Communist country in which religious freedom continues to be trampled underfoot.
We are in favour of contacts with Vietnam and we are in favour of economic contact with south-east Asia. We take the view, however, that the only basis for economic collaboration is the rule of law and democracy. Neither the rule of law nor democracy exist in Vietnam. We must give massive support to the process of reform in Vietnam, which is still in its infancy, by saying quite categorically that freedom of religion and conscience, freedom for the Buddhists, Catholics and Protestants who are brutally persecuted and imprisoned there, is our yardstick for collaboration with this country. Only when religious freedom is granted and only when these standards are applied can Vietnam become a partner for us."@en1
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