Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-14-Speech-4-274"
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"en.20061214.50.4-274"2
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"Mr President, those of us active in these human rights debates will recognise the subject of this one with depressing familiarity. The situation in Burma is getting worse not better, as colleagues have said, and I echo everything that has been said thus far.
In our view this motion could have been better. However, there is one provision I would highlight and that is the paragraph recognising that the sanctions against the regime in force are not hitting the target and on occasion not being observed at all. The Council must ensure that all our Member States are observing the sanctions we have agreed and, if not, name and shame those falling down. We must put pressure on our international partners to put pressure on the Burmese Government itself.
Paragraph 9 states that we want to see the sanctions widened, but we must always target them against the specific individuals in the regime and avoid doing harm to the people of Burma, because the suffering of the people must be our main concern, not our distaste for the democratic standards of the regime itself. That is where this motion really could be better.
We wanted to see an explicit recognition of the 8 December briefing by the International Crisis Group and I shall quote the opening line: ‘With growing signs of a humanitarian crisis in-the-making in Myanmar, the international community needs to get beyond debates about the country’s highly repressive political system.’
Caught in the middle of the grand geopolitics along with the people of Burma are the NGOs active on the ground trying to ameliorate the situation for the citizens of that unhappy country. We must in all our efforts remember that we must not undermine their independence, their efforts or ability to help the people. The recent closure of five Red Cross centres, an organisation that prides itself on its impartiality and integrity, is a desperate act by the Burmese Government, but one that was carried out because of a suspicion that the NGOs are too close to western policy. We must in all our actions on this ensure that we do not cut down their scope for manoeuvre.
Therefore, in welcoming and supporting this resolution, my Group would also sound a note of caution that the people on the ground trying to help those most affected by the situation must not have their freedom of movement curtailed by our actions."@en1
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