AA17CR11ADD1

AS (2017) CR 11
Addendum 1

2017 ORDINARY SESSION

________________________

(Second part)

REPORT

Eleventh sitting

Monday 24 April 2017 at 3 p.m.

Free debate

The following texts were submitted for inclusion in the official report by members who were present in the Chamber but were prevented by lack of time from delivering them.

Ms BARTOS (Hungary) – The Council of Europe, as the guardian of human rights and fundamental freedoms, pays particular attention to the functioning of the rule of law, of which freedom of religion is an important element.

This Organisation plays a crucial role in assisting governments’ efforts to honour the obligations undertaken prior to becoming members of the Council of Europe. Romania committed itself to returning church properties confiscated by the totalitarian regime, but this obligation has not yet been fulfilled. There were some promising measures, but there are serious developments showing that no progress has been made. On the contrary, political efforts are aimed at questioning the property rights of the Székely Mikó Reformed College. The authorities maintain the uncertainty for hundreds of students and teaching staff by disputing the legal grounds for the functioning in the case of the several hundred years old Roman Catholic Lyceum of Marosvásárhely/Tirgu Mures.

We all know and highly respect the continuous efforts of the Romanian authorities against corruption. We are surprised, however, to learn that they are using this as a pretext to make the functioning of religious educational institutions impossible. These actions raise serious questions concerning legal certainty and the limitations of freedom of religion.

Unfortunately, we do not see the political will to honour these obligations. I would like to recall the commitments Romania made to the Council of Europe in 1993. I will quote only one part from the obligation signed and ratified by Romania 24 years ago: paragraph 8 of Opinion No. 176 (1993) states: “The Assembly calls upon the Romanian Government to return property to the churches and to permit the establishment and operation of church schools with a particular view to teaching children of minority groups in their own mother tongue.” According to the written declaration of 22 June 1993, Romania confirmed that they wished to honour their commitments. The former Prime Minister Victor Ponta confirmed that Romania would honour its obligations when he delivered his speech here in this Chamber four years ago.

This is about the credibility of this Organisation. If we cannot enforce the commitments, it will have a negative effect on the dignity of the Council of Europe. I ask the Assembly to take a facilitating role in this matter.

Ms BÎZGAN-GAYRAL (Romania) – It is a great honour to be here today as part of the Romanian delegation and as a newly elected member of the Parliament of Romania following the elections of 11 December 2016. I represent a new party in my country, the Union to Save Romania, which won almost 9% of the parliamentary seats only six months after its creation. The USR is based on a citizens’ initiative, founded and funded by citizens, and built on two pillars: transparency and reconstruction.

Despite the turmoil of transition, the last few decades have been a period of modernisation and social and economic development for Romania. We have achieved significant improvement in the life quality of Romanian citizens. We have advanced reforms of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Above all, we have produced a new generation of European citizens, well aware of both their rights and their obligations, with a new consciousness of active and engaged citizenship.

I will not talk solely about Romania as I would like to highlight an issue and concern that my country shares with many other nations in Europe and the world. In the last few decades, not only my country but the whole world has made incredible progress in many fields, but many inequalities have also increased.

There is one specific inequality which we must and can strongly oppose: gender discrimination. Gender discrimination is a lingering epidemic of the past centuries which is still plaguing our society and is enjoying a shocking revival in many parts of the world. One in three women worldwide experiences physical or sexual violence, mostly by their partners, but it is not limited to partners.

Recent developments in many countries, including Romania, show that in the absence of progressive models, societies look backwards rather than forwards and tend to build relations between women and men in the family on an old, outdated patriarchal model. In this context, the prevention of domestic and gender-based violence becomes a priority in promoting gender-based relational models.

The beauty of principles lies in the results they produce in real life. Therefore, it is our mission not only to produce laws – good, wonderful laws – but to make sure they are implemented and that they change people’s lives for the better. We owe this to those who entrusted us with their hopes and aspirations, our voters and our people, and we owe this to ourselves, as citizens who pledged to serve the public good.

        Ms KARAPETYAN (Armenia) – Today is a day that strongly unites Armenians all over the world. Today is the day when many of us remember the stories of our families: scary stories about how our grandparents suffered the horror of massacres, of deaths and of the blood of their loved ones, and how, when they were very young, they were trying to escape assassins who murdered their families before their very eyes.

This massacre of Christians at the beginning of the 20th century on the territory of the Ottoman Empire was pure genocide, the implementation of a planned policy of young Turks. A million and a half Armenians were brutally tortured and killed. The adequate estimation of this historical truth is necessary not only for us – the descendants of the innocent victims or of those who survived – but for everyone else. Impunity gives birth to new crimes, and today the most important thing we can do is to unite our efforts to prevent genocides. Today, Armenia is acting as an initiative country to unify peoples and nations to this end; from 2015, the year of the centennial of the Armenian genocide, we have been organising large consolidating conferences in Armenia to invite specialists from all over the world to take part and to find ways jointly to fight against this disaster.

Each year, the number of States and international organisations that have recognised the Armenian genocide and condemn its denial increases. On 12 April 2015, during the first joint liturgy of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in St Peter’s basilica, Pope Francis noted that in the past century our human family had lived through three tragedies, the first being the genocide of the Armenian people.

Unfortunately, today we are seeing multiple examples of barbaric actions based on ethnic or religious grounds. The ongoing terror of so-called Islamic State may be a result of our closing our eyes to some facts in the past and – pray God that I am mistaken – may bring more tragic events in the future. We should not only recognise genocide, but condemn the denial of it. Only realising and understanding the mistakes of the past can lead us to a future without violence, massacres, horror and terror.

Genocide is a word – a reality – that all of us must unite to prevent. My family has its own sad story as well, and I do not want any person of any nation to have a story like this.

Mr KHADER (Palestine, Partner for Democracy) – Since the occupation of 1967, 800 000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israel: the equivalent of 40% of our male population in the occupied territory. Every Palestinian family has been directly or indirectly affected by Israel’s policy of mass arbitrary imprisonment. The aim of this illegal policy is to intimidate the civilian population.

The Israeli judicial system is complicit in Israel’s endeavour to suppress the freedom of the Palestinian people. Israeli military courts have a conviction rate for Palestinians ranging in recent years from 90% to 99%, effectively criminalising Palestinian presence and all forms of resistance, including peaceful and political ones, while virtually affording total impunity to Israelis who commit crimes against Palestinians.

Israel is responsible for violations under international law, including arbitrary arrest; the forcible transfer of detainees from the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the territory of the occupying power; torture and inhumane and degrading treatment; deliberate medical negligence; punitive and arbitrary measures; the use of so-called administrative detention, allowing detention without charge for indefinite periods; and solitary confinement. Israel has been arresting Palestinian parliamentarians since 2002, and 13 of our colleagues are still in jail today.

On 17 April, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails launched a hunger strike to ensure an end to Israeli abuses and violations against their rights as guaranteed by international conventions. Over 1 500 Palestinian prisoners out of a total of 6 500 detainees are taking part in this hunger strike. Their just demands regarding an end to arbitrary and punitive measures against them, their right to receive visits from their families and to contact their loved ones, and their right to education, are all grounded in international laws. Instead of addressing the legitimate demands of the Palestinian prisoners, Israel punished them for resorting to this peaceful means of protest by placing many of them in solitary confinement and inciting hate against them. Prisoners are guaranteed particular protection under the Geneva Conventions; instead of affording this protection, Israel, the occupying power, has made the prisoners a primary target of its policy of collective punishment.

It is also exercising character assassination against Marwan Barghouti. I remind colleagues that the Inter-Parliamentary Union concluded in unambiguous terms that the trial by an Israeli court that sentenced Marwan to five life sentences and 40 years was a political not a judicial matter, and violated the standards of a fair trial, stating that “the Barghouti case has very clearly demonstrated that, far from bringing security, the breaches of international law have, above all, undermined the authority of Israeli justice by casting discredit on its conduct of investigations and the procedures used”. The Inter-Parliamentary Union and the European Parliament, with the support of all political groups, have called repeatedly for the release of Marwan Barghouti. Eight Nobel Peace Prize laureates, 15 former presidents and prime ministers and 120 governments have joined the campaign to free Marwan and all Palestinian prisoners. Marwan was convicted by an illegitimate Israeli court in a show trial in the same way as Mandela was convicted by apartheid courts.

We call for your urgent intervention in support of this hunger strike and the just demands of the Palestinian prisoners, in the lead up to their freedom which is the prelude to the indispensable freedom of the Palestinian people and the achievement of peace. Our prisoners are risking their lives for the most basic rights, they deserve your immediate and clear support.

Mr KÜRKÇÜ (Turkey) – Today is 24 April, the anniversary of Red Sunday, Garmir Giraghi in Armenian. Since 1919, this date has been commemorated as the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. 

On 24 April 1915, leaders of the Armenian community in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, and later other locations, were arrested and moved to concentration centres near Ankara under the orders of the Minister of the Interior Talat Pasha. On that night, at least 235 Armenian intellectuals of Istanbul were arrested. Later, the total number of arrests and deportations amounted to 2 345. With the adoption of the "Tehcir Kanunu" on 29 May 1915, these detainees were later relocated within the Ottoman Empire; most of them were ultimately killed. 

This blow to the Armenian people was termed by the historians as the “decapitation strike” aimed at depriving the Armenian population of leadership and a chance for resistance against the systematic extermination of the Armenian inhabitants of Anatolia, with the aim of homogenizing the demographic structure of the Ottoman heartland. According to the 1927 official census, of the 1 700 000 Armenians living in Anatolia in 1914, only 140 000 had survived. This comprises one of the gravest crimes committed by the "strong men" of the Ottoman Empire against the peoples of Anatolia and humanity. On the 102nd anniversary, I express our condolences to the grandsons and daughters of the victims, and call on the Turkish Government to face up to, recognize and repudiate the evil heritage of the Ottoman Empire: to apologize for the Medz Yeghern the Armenians of Anatolia and Istanbul had been subjected to, instead of employing sentimental rhetoric.    

Ms NAGHDALYAN (Armenia) – On 24 April 1915, the Government of the Turkish Ottoman Empire began the realisation of one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century, which was unprecedented in terms of volume and consequences. Part of the Armenian people, who had lived in their homeland, were displaced and annihilated under a State-orchestrated plan. Around 1.5 million human beings were slaughtered simply for being Armenians.

Today, there is a great need to create effective mechanisms for the prevention of future crimes against mankind - against genocides. And now, more than ever, it is obvious that the impunity of States and administrations that have committed genocides, the lack of unified international condemnation, and the absence or incapacity of respective measures aimed at further prevention have all led to the fact that humanity still faces the real threat of possible genocides, among other serious challenges,.

We Armenians, survivors of genocide, bear a moral responsibility to do our utmost in the anti-genocide fight. For decades, we have been shouting “Never Again” when speaking of genocides. We said “Never Again” after the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The world screamed “Never Again” in 2014, when Da’esh started slaughtering innocent Yazidis. The Armenians shouted “Never Again” in 2015, the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, but this crime is still repeated around the globe.

Preventing genocide should be a top priority for the whole civilised world. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted almost seven decades ago – a landmark event. But goodwill alone is not sufficient to prevent genocides from happening: stable mechanisms of prevention are required; proper warning, a response to the genocidal environment, and the raising of public awareness play an extremely significant role in the fight for genocide prevention.

On March 2015, in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted by consensus the Genocide Prevention Resolution initiated by Armenia. More than 70 States joined Armenia and co-authored the resolution. On the basis of this resolution, in September 2015 the United Nations General Assembly established 9 December as the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime. I believe that through our joint efforts we will succeed in uprooting the evil of genocide.

Mr NOVYNSKYI (Ukraine) – Freedom of religion, as stipulated in Article 9 of the European Convention for the protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, is among the pillars of modern European societies. Every member of the Council of Europe is obliged to demonstrate unequivocal respect for that principle. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Ukraine where regular and deliberate interference of the State with the freedom of common Ukrainians to manifest their religion in worship, practice and observance has recently become a major challenge to democracy and human rights in my country. The situation has dramatically deteriorated over the last three years.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) has become the target of a focused campaign of pressure and intimidation. Far right radicals with no hindrance and sometimes open support from the Ukraine Government, resort to direct violence against clergy and common believers. Dozens of churches and temples have been forcefully captured from the UOC to be illegally transferred to the non-canon church that enjoys the open endorsement of those in power. During these violent acts, several priests were killed and the law enforcement bodies deliberately curtailed investigations. The canon Ukrainian Orthodox Church has become the subject of a State-sponsored media campaign of discreditation under the false pretext of the lack of “patriotism”, despite the evident fact that such a smear cannot, in principle, be applied to a religious organisation.

I call upon the members of the Assembly to pay attention to the dangerous situation with regard to freedom of religion in Ukraine and to send a strong signal to the Ukrainian Government that the campaign of pressure, intimidation and the mocking of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should be terminated immediately.

Mr ROMO MEDINA (Mexico, Observer) – Corruption has been an endemic evil visible in all historical and social contexts. In the international context, no State is unaware of this problem. Corruption is a priority issue on the national agenda of most countries; it constitutes a major problem to the consolidation of human rights, depriving society of benefits that could improve their quality of life, by affecting the potential and allocation of public and, in some cases, private resources.

Modern political systems must evolve within strict accountability limits, which must be monitored allowing citizen participation. The current challenge for States is to render transparent any public action. In an unprecedented event, the Mexican State accepted the challenge to design the National Anti-Corruption System. The first step was the approval of the right to access to information and transparency by the National Congress. The legislative process was nurtured with the participation of society, through the Open Parliament scheme. To introduce transparency in the constitutional text had, as a logical consequence, the need to react in an effective way to the political and social conjuncture of our country.

The National Anticorruption System was constructed through legislative actions sustained in a constitutional reform. This reform supported the efforts of the executive power to legally, politically and socially modernise the structure of the Mexican State. The system aims to establish principles, general guidelines, public policies and authorities’ co-ordination procedures at all levels of government, in order to prevent and sanction administrative offenses and corruption acts regulated as crimes, as well as to strengthen control in the use of public resources.

      In this titanic task, the three powers of the union are focused on fighting corruption extensively and effectively, knowing that the legislative enactment must be accompanied by the joint efforts of all agencies involved. The correct action of all institutional and social actors, as well as co-ordination and communication with international organisations, will allow us to achieve paradigmatic changes that will contribute to strengthening transparency and fighting corruption, in order to develop the guiding principles of democracy and of human rights.

Mr VOVK (Ukraine) – Recently, there have been voices in Europe calling for restoring dialogue and co-operation with Putin’s Russia, including in the Council of Europe, aiming to readmit the Russian delegation to this Assembly. A dialogue, however, requires two sides, both of which are willing to talk sincerely and share common values. But in Russia’s case, we face a regime of a predatory nature that seeks to use dialogue for cheating and gaining advantage. It seems that the concept of dialogue is being hijacked and actually used as a disguise for the policy of appeasement of the aggressor.

Unfortunately, Europeans often engage in wishful thinking and self-deception, perceiving Putin’s Russia as a normal State. You are up against a cheater, but you naively believe that Russia will play by the rules, when in fact Russia is very good at playing with the rules.

European values are under threat not only from rising populism and xenophobia, but from aggressive Russian expansionism and imperialism. The latest example of Russian “hybrid war” against Europe is the case of President Agramunt’s shameful visit to Syria. Putin is blackmailing the civilised world by creating and deepening international problems, producing and spreading fear. Like an international racketeer, he is ready to leave the international community in peace only for a price.

Putin demands acceptance of his imperial geopolitical ambitions: Russian monopoly in the post-Soviet countries, a sphere of influence in Europe, participation as a key player in the Middle East and other Kremlin whims. Russia’s scenario is: a world of international anarchy, fear and a “war of everyone against everyone”. In Putin’s “tough guys” world, the strong beat and humiliate the weak. Like a racketeer, Putin only understands strength, despises weakness and uses it to his advantage. The policy of appeasing the international hooligan only convinces him that he is surrounded by weaklings who can be bullied into achieving his desired results.

The international community is now at a crossroads: accept a world that is plunged into chaos and is ruled by the strong, or fight for a civilised world with the rule of law, democracy and the moral imperative. The kind of world which awaits us in the 21st century is being decided to a large extent in Ukraine, which, through the spirit of Ukrainians, has become an outpost of this fight.

The basic values of the Council of Europe are in danger because of Russia. We need courage and political will to defend these values by all means.