International

Christmas turns many people’s thoughts to the world’s oppressed people. Email inboxes in the European Parliament are bulging with Christmas greetings. Euro-MPs as well as organisations never before heard from are all of a sudden sending me their warmest Christams greetings with their hopes for a more peaceful and better world. Once the EP returns in January this is of course forgotten, but the Christmas period remains a good moment to consider the question of how the EP stands up for the oppressed. And the answer is that it does so rather selectively, with the oppressed in some parts of the world proving more popular than those elsewhere.

Both left and right in the European Parliament have, in this respect, their pet causes. The right has the majority, and so during the December plenary we once again witnessed the award of the Sakharov prize, the EP’s prize for human rights activists, to a Cuban dissident, just as happened in 2009. There are, in truth, more places on the Earth where human rights are abused, but at the moment the right has it in first and foremost for Cuba.

Mind you, a similar phenomenon exists on the left, with the Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco for many years, in number one spot. Beyond that Colombia is the favourite, with Tunisia and Libya scoring high. On the other hand the United Left group is always sensitive about hauling up Communist or ex-Communist states for human rights abuses. This includes the states of the former Soviet Union as well as countries like China.

What this amounts to, in short, is a lot of discussion about matters about which the EP can actually do very little. The Sakharov prize gets a certain amount of publicity, but how many people in the Netherlands will know that it has been awarded? Resolutions, and questions to Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, can also help to draw attention to particular human rights issues, but none of them amounts to a legally-binding decision of the EP.

I would find it a good thing if in the future the EP were to be somewhat more sparing with its energy in relation to this policy area. Human rights deserve to be protected, without regard to political background or political preference. All abuses of human rights should be treated in the same way and it makes no sense to close your eyes to abuses depending on whether you are friendly with a country or not. Daring to criticise is a token of friendship, provided that such criticism is constructive and preferably based on close dialogue. The Sakharov prize must not be abused to deliver only criticism to one and the same state, without also extending a hand to that state. And the left must accept that left regimes or regimes formerly of the left can also make mistakes. This would certainly improve the EP’s powers of persuasion.

Lastly, a message for our own Foreign Minister, Uri Rosenthal: you might well feel that your role is more one of salesman than preacher, but human rights are not just for Christmas sermons. If in your foreign policy you play down the attention paid to human rights, you will undermine your own credibility. This is especially true of the Netherlands, which is host in The Hague to so many bodies which in general concern themselves with international law, and which thus has a reputation to uphold. Human rights must not be hostage to a government’s political colour and deserve, whatever that colour may be, to be protected. And not only at Christmas, but year in, year out!