What Isabel spoke about.

Mr President, after 20 years, the infamous Article 23 returns to expand the repressive arsenal imposed by Xi Jinping in the Hong Kong National Security Law. Joseph John, a dual Portuguese and Hong Kong national, is the first European to be condemned under the new law for alleged calls for "secession" from the UK. Pasmese yourself: five years of imprisonment dictated by the application of extraterr

Mr President, I would like to emphasise that this is a happy moment. The scheduling of this emergency had in fact an almost immediate effect, leading to the passage of Dr Ibadoghlu to house arrest. However, that is not enough. Today, I just had contact with your daughter, who is here, attending this session, Zhala Bayramova – whom I want to greet here – and she told me about her father’s situation

Madam President, High Representative, this is the last time I address you in this regard and allow me, at this point, to underline my full agreement, my support and my recognition that I have so often been the most lucid voice among the voices of the European Union in addressing the upsurge of conflict in the Middle East. 40,000 deaths, including more than 200 journalists, more than 90 aid workers

Madam President, if politics is the art of the possible, the present moment is one of the most striking illustrations of this. But even this awareness does not erase in all of us the bitter trait that, after years of clamouring for a common immigration and asylum policy, we will come to an end with this solution: a pact far short of what defending European values requires for the future. This is n

Mr President, Commissioner, with the return of the Taliban to power, after the uncoordinated withdrawal of the United States, barbarism has taken over Afghanistan and, once again, women have been the main victims. Once again, the heavy cloak of invisibility and dehumanisation has fallen on them and they are once again denied the right to education, work, free movement, freedom of expression and th

Mr President, we are only a short time away from entering the 13th year of war in Syria without any prospect of a peace solution. The greed of Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran, have incessantly condemned the Syrian population to misery, death and destruction, caused by war, but also by corruption and the trafficking of drugs and weapons, elevated to one of the main sources of revenue of this

Mr President, in the current geopolitical context, the Caucasus and relations with Armenia are becoming increasingly important and relevant in this context. That is why Armenia's path towards closer relations and ensuring a European perspective for the country is important and must receive a corresponding response from the European Union. However, we must not forget the conflict that exists, the p

Madam President, 2023 was exactly the year of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, coincidentally, our consistency with the values and principles enshrined therein has been questioned as never before. The war in Ukraine and the escalation of conflict in the Middle East have been producers of dramatic violations of this statement, which have been real fire tests of

Mr President, after all this time, we are overcome by weariness and lack of words to face this situation. There is no longer a single safe place in the Gaza Strip and, given the severity of the humanitarian crisis, hunger, lack of medical care and death are the only certainty for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, for all those who can still survive the Israeli bombings. UNRWA is, in this situation,

Mr President, the death penalty, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment are black marks of the Lukashenka regime. More than 1,500 people have been detained since the 2020 elections. Meanwhile, the relatives of these political prisoners are being persecuted and detained in recent times. In a few days, Belarus will once again hold elections. And, once again, puppet elections, elections that are no

Madam President, let me start by congratulating our colleague José Gusmao not only on the excellent work he has done on this report, but also on the way he has involved civil society and all those who are fighting for equality and non-discrimination. And I want to assure you that you will count on our support in including the reference to the need to ensure equal access to health for the LGBT popu

– Madam President, Xi Jinping's repressive machine, in its battle for the iron control of everything and everyone, has nothing to do with it and even religious practice is not immune to the persecution of the Chinese regime. In addition to wanting to define the legality of religious activities, Beijing seeks to redesign religions, aligning them with the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and

Madam President, precisely a year ago - more month, less month, more week, less week - we discussed here in this House the authoritarian drift of the Mitsotakis Government. That debate was very much focused, at the time, on the Pegasus case, and, from then until today, the little evolution, we have not seen any evolution. On the contrary. After all this time, we continue to see the use of espionag

Israel has long overstepped its right to self-defense in the face of the October 7 attack by Hamas. What Israel is doing is creating a huge legion of rapists, hungry people, desperate people, fathers and mothers without children, orphans, and generating hatred in the region, generating fear, insecurity, hopelessness. My dear friends, at the end of December I was in Jordan with a group of the Deleg

Madam President, Commissioner, over the years we have witnessed a slow and silenced genocide in Tibet, far from the television cameras, far from the spotlight, far from the media. But that is not what will silence us, nor is it what will make us forget what is happening every day to the Tibetan people. The abduction of children, their subjection to indoctrination in Chinese colonial boarding schoo

Madam President, in the Catholic tradition and also in the Orthodox tradition, we will celebrate Christmas in the coming weeks. And it is good to remember that Mikalai Statkevich, but also Polina Panasyuk, a young mother of two, will be away from her relatives. This is an absolutely intolerable condition. They are imprisoned solely and simply because they have asked for freedom and democracy for t

Mr President, Commissioner, at the beginning of this conflict, in the Committee on Foreign Affairs, we had the opportunity to exchange views on the high degree of lethality that this war threatened and also the high level of destruction. Two months later, we see UNRWA saying that it is on the edge of what is possible in terms of humanitarian aid. We're coming to a point where we're not going backw

Madam President, women in Iran continue to risk their lives fighting for rights. Armita Geravand, who died at the age of 16 for not using , is an example of this. Nasrin Sotoudeh, a Sakharov Prize-winning activist who has since been released, was arrested at Armita's funeral. He did not use the hijab. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi is jailed and without medical care for refusing to us

Mr President, some will ask what is new in Hong Kong and I say that in recent years there has been nothing new under the sun in Hong Kong, except the sharpening of the continuing affronts to fundamental rights and freedoms. This is one of the hallmarks of Xi Jinping's autocratic power, based on the emptying of the independence of the judiciary, to which the political verdict overlaps, and on the f

Mr President, Mr High Commissioner, Commissioner, first of all a word of appreciation for the foresight, firmness and determination at times when the reigning cacophony has threatened to take us out of an active role in the Middle East. Yesterday, like thousands of citizens, I received in my personal email a request for help from a non-governmental organization, which at one point said: Our teams

Madam President, the situation of Ukrainian refugee women has made even more visible the regression of women’s rights to sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion, in several Member States, such as Poland, Hungary and Romania. The denial of access to sexual and reproductive health care to women who have experienced - many of them on their territory, in their country - sexual violence

Mr President, Commissioner, Minister, when I am asked whether this pact on migration and asylum is what I stand for, I reply that it is not. I answer, yes, that this is the possible pact, while the right persists in instrumentalizing immigrants and refugees, making them the external enemy that ensures their political survival. I regret that Mr Paulo Rangel, my countryman and compatriot, has yielde

Madam President, we cannot say that Azerbaijan's continued military attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh in recent days are a surprise. After the 2020 war, Aliyev’s fiery rhetoric, the constant provocations at the border with Armenia and the blockade of the Lachin corridor in December 2022 gave a foretaste of what is happening. Despite this, the smell of gas and oil made President Von der Leyen name Azerba

Madam President, Commissioner, there is no room in Azerbaijan for vehemence in terms of political criticism or denouncing the corruption installed at the deepest level of state structures by the kleptocratic regime of the family of Aliyev and his comrades. Economist Gubad Ibadoghlu now joins other activists, journalists, opposition members and civil society representatives on the long list of vict

Madam President, there are 1517 Belarusians who remain in prison after the fraudulent elections in 2020 and the number continues to grow. Recently, Lukashenko banned Belarusians from renewing passports abroad, wanting to provoke mass return. In flight from a dictatorship that has captured and tortured them in the last three years, between 200 000 and 300 000 Belarusians have left the country. Thes