Speech by Edward McMillan-Scott MEP (EPP-ED, United Kingdom),
in the European Parliament

Situation in China after the earthquake and before the Olympic Games

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Edward McMillan-Scott (EPP-ED). – Mr President, I wish to begin by expressing my condolences to the relatives of those who lost their lives and those who have suffered from the earthquake.

But I want in particular, if I may, to address my remarks to Mr Jouyet for his declaration today that President Sarkozy, who comes here tomorrow, will attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

I would like to recall the editorial in today’s local newspaper, Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace: 'L’Europe a capitulé' – Europe has capitulated. Not only is President Sarkozy going to the Olympic Games, but also, on 16 June, broadcasts by a group that broadcast into China via Eutelsat, with the permission of the French authorities, were suspended. This has been done before. On this occasion I beg the French Government to allow NDTV to resume their broadcasts.

I am submitting today, to the United Nations rapporteurs on torture and religious freedom, a dossier relating to some of the people I had contact with when I was in Beijing two years ago. Mr Cao Dong continues to be tortured in a prison in north-east China. Mr Niu Jinping was re-arrested on 20 April 2008 and is being tortured. His wife, Ms Zhang Lianying, has been tortured many times and has been imprisoned four times. I am putting on my website a dossier of 50 sorts of torture that she is suffering. Mr Gao Zhisheng, a Christian human rights lawyer, I know was very badly treated earlier this year. He remains under house arrest. Mr Hu Jia was arrested after giving evidence to the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights.

This is an arbitrary, brutal and paranoid regime. We should keep politics out of sport; we should keep Mr Sarkozy away from Beijing.

(Applause)