mr president the chinese people are completely right to ask us why the european parliament has put the situation in china on the agenda of the first part-session of its new mandate
our answer must be clear this is because china is very important to us and not because we think that our role is to teach china or to impose our views on how sensitive internal problems of this country should be solved
it is precisely because china is so important to us that we should pay close attention to any event affecting its internal stability and any event that could become a threat to its security
this time the context was given by the multi-ethnic realities in the xinjiang region and the aspirations of the uighur predominant ethnic group to autonomy
such contexts are always sensitive and therefore respect for human and minority rights leading towards the sense of dignity and security for both minority and majority is important
minority rights however should not be an excuse for and they could not excuse the separatist policies the extremist means to promote those policies and certainly not the killing of peaceful civilians belonging to a minority or to an ethnic community
while asking for full respect for human rights and minority rights while expressing compassion for all victims of these rights while asking for clarification concerning terrorist religious extremist and separatist dimensions of these events the european parliament should offer its assistance to the chinese government and society in order to cope with these difficult realities which are also a problem in some of our countries
while asking the chinese government to refrain from the excessive use of power we have also to ask everybody in the world to refrain from using minority rights as a means for promoting geopolitical goals
