2009 ORDINARY SESSION
________________________
(Second part)
REPORT
Fourteenth Sitting
Wednesday29 April 2009 at 10 a.m.
Mr HERKEL (Estonia). – The situation that we are facing today was described many decades ago by the great British writer George Orwell, “We are all equal, but some are more equal than others.” We silently accepted that the Russian Federation has many more rights than other member states in this House. What is the consequence? What situation are we facing? We have a member state that can: attack a neighbouring country and occupy its territories; organise the forceful passportisation of the citizens of another state; apply pressure to change the regime in the neighbouring country; recognise some breakaway regions; stop the access of international monitors to the conflict area; develop its military bases in the territory of other states; and undermine the work of the European Court of Human Rights. The latter will be tomorrow’s topic.
The question still is: how much is too much? It is very difficult to combine a value-based organisation of the kind that we have and that we want to have and at the same time to have the Russian Federation in the club. It has become more and more difficult. The aim to have Russia in the Organisation is right, but step-by-step this is more and more impossible. My question is how we should convince our people that this is still an organisation of values and not Orwell’s world in “Animal Farm”.
Terviktekst: http://assembly.coe.int/