Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-09-Speech-2-237"
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"en.20040309.8.2-237"2
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"Mr President, I find it strange that the European Parliament should be so busy with these efforts on behalf of enemies of democracy. The detainees are not a bunch of scouts that have got lost on an outing. All the evidence suggests that the detainees have been treated humanely. Pictures from the naval base show cells considerably better than those in many of the EU countries’ prisons.
It is only a few of the EU Member States that are actively participating militarily in the fight against the reactionary forces that would use terrorism to change the direction in which the world is moving. That is a fight we leave to the United States and its true allies. To listen to some of those with a professional hatred of the United States, one would imagine that, in their view, the Taliban and al-Qa’ida are a species of freedom fighter who wish to help poor and oppressed peoples. They are the opposite. The terrorists must be given the kind of fright that will deter them from continuing with their criminal acts. Only by crushing their networks can freedom and democracy be developed in the world.
The detainees at the Guantánamo naval base are not soldiers in an organised army. They are not an underground movement in an occupied country. They are terrorists who fanatically oppose the human rights that some in this House now believe they should enjoy. Some of the prisoners have acquired citizenship of EU countries. When, subsequently, they take part, with or without visible weapons, in an armed struggle in which some of our soldiers are killed, then they are traitors and must be treated as such. I am certain that there are EU countries which would not have shown the United States’s forbearance, but would have shot a whole lot of them on the spot. It is unfitting that we, who are not waging war in Afghanistan and who have not ourselves been exposed to genuine terrorist attacks in our countries, should think we should tell the United States what to do.
I wish to thank Commissioner Patten for making it clear that the Commission has no competence in this area and add that the Council has no such competence either. I wish to recommend to Parliament that it vote against the report."@en1
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