Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-10-Speech-4-155"
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"en.20030410.8.4-155"2
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"Mr President, in relation to the previous debate I am not interested in clear replies from the Commission. I want clear replies from the governments who are actually indicted in these resolutions before this House this afternoon. If these governments, including the Egyptian Government, do not take human rights seriously then we must take further action, if necessary suspending any agreements that we have with them.
The appalling onslaught against minorities in Egypt is terrifying to behold. People are being entrapped on the Internet because of their homosexuality. Let me refer to one individual, because this is what human rights are about: the rights of individuals. We in this House standing here, talking, debating, take everything for granted, yet these people, because of their difference, have everything robbed from them. Do we listen? No. Some of us talk on, whilst others call for tolerance.
A young man, Wissam Abyad, was entrapped on the Internet. He went with a friend to meet a supposed gay man. He was arrested, along with his friend. He is now in prison. He is awaiting appeal. I call for his sentence to be suspended immediately, because that is this man's only way out.
The cases of two more men out of the 52 who were arrested over a year ago were not reviewed. They are undergoing not forced labour, but hard labour. As to the three British men awaiting trial in Egypt and the allegations of torture that they have made, have their cases been independently investigated? Of course not.
I say this to Egypt, and I say it as a friend: the litmus test of any civilised society is how it treats its minorities. It is for Egypt to show us here in this House, that it takes the rights of their minorities seriously, to call for an end to discrimination against those minorities and to release from prison and end immediately the investigations and the arrests of gay men throughout Egypt which worry us here in this House."@en1
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