2008 ORDINARY SESSION

________________________

(Third part)

REPORT

Twenty-fifth Sitting

Thursday 26 June 2008 at 10 a.m.

Lord RUSSELL-JOHNSTON (United Kingdom). – I, too, congratulate Jean-Claude Mignon on his report. We in the ALDE Group feel that it is well balanced and informative and that it seeks dialogue but does not hesitate to make very direct criticisms of China’s human rights record and pace of change. In that regard, I give notice of my wish later to move an oral sub-amendment, with your permission, Mr President, to paragraph 15.2, whose ambiguity I did not really notice until I read the report again last night. That paragraph calls on China to “respect its ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, like all the Council of Europe member states”. We all know that all the member states of the Council of Europe do not do that. Therefore, I think that that phrase should be deleted. I do not want the Chinese to accuse us of double standards.

Before I leave the question of double standards, I should mention the point made by the rapporteur in paragraph 18 of his explanatory memorandum, where he refers to the Olympic Charter. The Olympic Charter is not within our control. However, there is one country in the world that excludes all women from representation – Saudi Arabia – but nobody speaks about that.

One subject not very much addressed that aroused quite a debate in the ALDE Group is the increasing divergence between those who give priority to human rights and those who give priority to trade and criticise the former if it harms or impedes the latter. That is an important question, and we should sit down with the business community and talk about it; otherwise the two approaches will drift further and further apart, which would be bad. Of course, that is not only a one-way process. The Chinese are buying into Europe. That might be good perhaps, or it might not. In my experience, totalitarian regimes only send abroad those who are ideologically reliable.

I said at the beginning that I believe in dialogue – I do – and when I was President of the Assembly, I paid a well-received official visit to China. I had an hour with the Foreign Minister and then only a little less time with Li Peng, who was the most powerful man in China at that time. It might amuse the Assembly if I say that, for the formal televised exchange, we sat not facing each other but in seats a little bit apart, parallel to each other, and I had been told to make a short statement. I decided to concentrate on the death penalty and hoped for a bit of extra punch by pointing out that we also criticise the United States on that subject. Li Peng snatched a sideways glance at me before turning back, and I saw in relief that he was smiling. “If you don’t tell me how to run my internal affairs,” he said, “I won’t tell you how to reform the House of Lords”. So, before coming to my final point, let me say that something that encouraged me about dialogue with China is that we share a sense of humour.

Paragraph 11 of the explanatory memorandum rightly mentions the good speeches of Merkel and Kouchner. This Assembly is an interfering body; we can be diplomatic, but we are not diplomats. Were it not for the commitment, courage and persistence of our predecessors, we would not now have a European Court of Human Rights. I sense a certain drift in the Assembly away from being forthright in criticising fellow members. It was noteworthy that, in the recent Russian Duma elections, members of a bloc who used to be excellent members of the Liberal Group were persecuted and denied a voice. We also had the honour of having Mr Kovaliev in our group, and he says it all in his open letter.

We must always speak out within our organisation for human rights, and paragraph 10 of the rapporteur’s explanatory memorandum says that, wherever they are transgressed worldwide, it is our duty to act. That is our responsibility and raison d’être.