Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-22-Speech-4-275"
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"en.20040422.11.4-275"2
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"Mr President, we must take a very firm stand against the human rights violations and acts of aggression in Nigeria; about that there can be no doubt. In contrast to Islam, which is a great world faith, Islamism is a criminal ideology, and a very clear distinction must be drawn between the two.
We have to be careful, though, not to consider these things from one angle alone. As we know, most of the states in West Africa are artificial creations drawn on the map by the colonial powers, so that peoples in the South are divided, two examples being the Ibo and the Ewe, who are Christians and animists and live on both sides of the border. The same can be said of the peoples of the North, the Hausa and Fulbe, most of whom are Muslims and also live in a variety of states. This simply happens to be the way these states’ borders were drawn; never, throughout history, have they corresponded with the ethnic realities. This is something that has to be clear to us, and this is something for which we Europeans really do share responsibility.
The resolution quite rightly refers to the state of Plateau. It is in Plateau that these ethnic groups collide, and the situation is made even more acute by economic inequalities and migratory flows. The whole place is a highly unstable melting pot and could easily explode. It also has to be borne in mind that Nigeria is a multi-ethnic state, one of the most populous countries in the world and probably the most populous in Africa, and that there are massive oil interests at stake there, so it really does call for extremely sensitive handling and subtle thinking.
That notwithstanding, what I would like to say to Mrs André-Léonard
is that it is taking sophistry a bit too far to say that there is fundamentalism in both the Christian and Islamic camps. There is no Christian fundamentalism in Nigeria. There is no Islamic fundamentalism there either; there is, instead, on the one hand, this complex conflict situation, and, on the other, Islamist ideologues attempting to exploit it for their own ends. If we are to address this situation, we need sound knowledge of these countries’ history and ethnic make-up; only then will we be able to support the peace process and prevent Nigeria from disintegrating in a bloody war compared with which the carnage in the former Yugoslavia will seem trivial.
That, as has been said, is why our task is to get actively involved in the peace process, but to do so with precise knowledge of the realities of these countries, on which we can draw in our deliberations."@en1
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