What Isabel spoke about.

14

Sep

2021

PT Speech

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A new EU-China strategy (debate)

Madam President, it is impossible to discuss a new EU-China Strategy without talking about Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, but also about Macau and the constant abuses of the Portugal-China Joint Declaration and the rights, freedoms and guarantees enshrined therein. We cannot remain indifferent to the misuse of the pandemic to suppress freedoms of assembly and demonstration, to the conditioning of …

14

Sep

2021

PT Speech

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Situation in Lebanon (debate)

Madam President, the explosion of the port of Beirut in 2020 was also the explosion of an intricate political system where stories of clans and legacies of tragedies, the public and the private, the national and the family, are mixed. A system marked by corruption and impunity that urgently needs to be put to an end and that has led the country to the abyss of hyperinflation, unemployment, lack of…

8

Jul

2021

PT Speech

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The death penalty in Saudi Arabia, notably the cases of Mustafa Hashem al-Darwish and Abdullah al-Howaiti

Mr President, death to death, war to war, hatred to hatred. Freedom is an immense city of which we are all fellow citizens. I evoke these words of the writer Victor Hugo in a text in which he welcomed the abolition of the death penalty in Portugal 154 years ago to point out how anachronistic, cruel, degrading and inhumane the persistence of the death penalty in the 21st century is. Shame on humani…

8

Jul

2021

PT Speech

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Hong Kong, notably the case of Apple Daily

Mr President, freedom of expression and the free and independent press are pillars of any democratic society. The closure of Apple Daily represents another step in Hong Kong's slide towards censorship, repression and disregard for international conventions and the Basic Law. In Hong Kong and other parts of China, such as Xinjiang and Tibet, and even Macau, national security law is used to persecut…

6

Jul

2021

PT Speech

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Annual Report on the functioning of the Schengen area (debate)

Madam President, the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most serious tests Schengen has faced to date. 18 of the 26 states have imposed restrictions on the right to move freely within the European area. Such measures, even if justified on grounds of public health, have often been applied in a random, uncoordinated and disproportionate manner at the expense of the free movement of persons and goods. T…

6

Jul

2021

PT Speech

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Situation in Tigray, Ethiopia (continuation of debate)

Mr President, in March this year the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned of deeply distressing reports of sexual and gender-based violence, extrajudicial killings, widespread destruction and looting in Ethiopia's Tigray region. Since then, the international community has remained in distressing paralysis. Unfortunately, disrespect for human rights is not confined to Tigray, it extends thr…

6

Jul

2021

PT Speech

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EU global human rights sanctions regime (EU Magnitsky Act) (debate)

Madam President, enabling the enjoyment of human rights by all people is a strategic objective of the European Union. This phrase, uttered by the High Representative when adopting the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, demonstrates not only the scale and importance of this foreign policy instrument, which many of us have been calling for for so long, but also our responsibility to ensure that i…

6

Jul

2021

PT Speech

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Foreign interference in democratic processes (debate)

Madam President, the constant array of new challenges that foreign interference and disinformation pose to the health of the democracies of the European Union forces us to rethink our defence strategy against such threats and our attitude to such attacks. These problems are not solved by fiery statements towards Moscow or Beijing. It is necessary to establish increasingly robust mechanisms to defe…