Speeches

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, in 1959 Iraq passed a progressive law for women's rights, the Personal Status Act. This law, considered one of the most progressive in the Middle East, marked significant advances in gender equality at the time. By transferring jurisdiction over family matters to the State, it set, for example, the legal age of marriage at 18 years. Decades of war later, including more than eight years of US invasion that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, have weakened and fractured all these societal advances. The 1959 law is now threatened by a proposed amendment that could reduce the age of marriage to only 9 years for young girls, with the risk of increasing the deprivation of access to education, endangering the health of young girls and a deep regression of their place in society. The work of Iraqi civil society actors must be encouraged. The solution comes from them, including the NGOs OLFI and Alliance 188. The progressive legacy of Iraqi society is present and our responsibility here is to amplify its voices and support its struggles.

Madam President, before speaking on the situation of Uyghur political prisoners, I would like to point out that this Parliament systematically refuses to put the situation in Gaza and Lebanon on the agenda. While genocide has been ongoing for a year, the European Union is ruling on all human rights violations worldwide, with the exception of those committed by the Israeli regime. The reason is simple: The European Union is now complicit in genocide and war crimes in Palestine and Lebanon. Parenthesis closed. Ilham Tohti and Gulshan Abbas are both glaring examples of the ongoing persecution of Uighurs, arbitrarily arrested for separatism and terrorism, respectively. UN reports have documented the existence of internment camps under the pretext of fighting terrorism, a misguided legal prism giving rise to human rights violations targeting in particular Muslim populations. Although the products of Uyghur forced labour have already been the subject of a clear position by the European Parliament, much remains to be done. Nearly a million Uyghurs would still be interned, let us not forget them. At the same time, let us not be fooled by the selective indignation of the European Union over the necessary defence of human rights.

Mr. Bellamy, your inculture of the subject is one of the sources that prevents us from moving forward on this issue. The question you ask is who the aggressor is and who the aggressor is. The question is what time dimension you are in. This conflict did not begin with the attacks of Hamas and Hezbollah. This conflict began in 1948 and it is precisely because here you have left Israel and abandoned Israelis and Palestinians since the Oslo Accords that we face this chaos today. So the issue is the sharing of responsibilities between all actors in the region. But they must be placed in a historical context, dating back to 1948.

Madam President, Commissioner Borrell, I am addressing you, Mr Borrell, as a Member of the European Parliament, but also as a child of the Nakba. I hope you realize that Israel's impunity began as early as 1948. "Lebanon must not become a new Gaza." These words are those of the UN Secretary-General, declared undesirable on Israeli soil. 2,000 people killed, including 150 children, more than 10,000 injured, more than 1,200,000 displaced, including 350,000 children, according to UNICEF. The Israeli regime is now strengthened by the silence of the Western powers. It is the lack of clear condemnation of European countries, and therefore of the European Union, that allows Israel to act as it does. In Gaza, where genocide is taking place, as in Lebanon, we are being watched. The military incursion into the south of the country is also being carried out in defiance of all international conventions. The excuse of Hezbollah and Hamas is being used today as a pretext by Netanyahu. Israel was already invading Lebanon in 1978, four years before Hezbollah was born. Israel colonized and occupied the Palestinian territories long before the creation of Hamas. The European Union does not give itself the means to achieve coherence or political credibility in foreign policy. We owe this demand for justice to all those who trust our institutions, to all those whom we sacrifice and betray...

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in Belarus the Lukashenko regime is waging war on all dissenting voices in civil society. Lukashenko is running for a seventh term in the next presidential election in early 2025. This summer, Lukashenko successively pardoned political prisoners, most likely in preparation for this election. However, thousands of trade unionists, journalists and political opponents are still detained, some of them tortured, as documented by numerous NGOs. This is the case, for example, of Andrei Gnyot, a human rights defender currently detained in Serbia. We call on the Serbian regime not to extradite Andrei to Belarus, the last European country not to have abolished the death penalty, which is still enshrined in its criminal code. This is also the case for Maria Kolesnikova, who is being held in solitary confinement without access to adequate medical care, despite her deteriorating state of health. Human Rights Watch has warned about his case in recent months. Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and trade unionist Aliaksandr Yarashuk are also affected by these practices. The European Union must demand that the Belarusian authorities immediately release all political prisoners arrested and detained solely on the basis of their opposition to the ruling regime. We must also support the Belarusian people in their aspiration to live in a pluralistic and truly democratic society. From Minsk to Jenin to Goma, we cannot think of human rights orientations with variable geometry. Any missed opportunity to uphold human rights is an additional responsibility for the state of the world that we will sooner or later have to take on. The European Union must therefore impose sanctions and finally assume its responsibilities.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, from the Sykes-Picot agreements of 1916 to the conditions for the creation of the State of Israel, which were already sacrificing the Palestinians expelled from their land, the Palestinian people have been suffering a continuous Nakba for almost a century. History reminds us of the political responsibilities of European countries in this colonial conflict. In Gaza, genocide by destroying the social group is underway. In the West Bank, it is a settlement that makes it impossible to make any political progress towards the liberation of the Palestinian people. Israel has established a veritable apartheid regime, documented and denounced by many UN NGOs and experts. The latest ICJ opinion makes specific reference to this. The European Parliament can and must impose an embargo on arms exports to Israel, suspend the EU-Israel agreement conditional on respect for human rights, which the Parliament had already voted in 2002, sanction colonization and recognize the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. Already four generations of my family have been sacrificed. My question is simple: How many more generations before the EU finally takes on its responsibilities?