Human rights debate June 2010.wmv

Mr President, as the rapporteur points out, under the terms of the United Nations Charter every Member State has a responsibility to ensure that respect for human rights is universal. The European Convention on Human Rights, however, seems to think differently, as it bestows special rights on some at the expense of others. The special rights, for example, bestowed on travellers have meant that in the UK, in my own West Midlands constituency, local people have seen their own rights eroded.

With the protection of the Convention, so-called travellers can build on land that our people have nurtured and set aside for future generations to enjoy. This is known as greenbelt land. With the protection of the Convention, travellers enjoy special privileges in health care and education, services built up at great expenses by successive generations.

In my local community, citizens are mounting 24-hour vigils in wind and rain in order to ensure that travellers comply with legal obligations. They are prepared to lie down in the road at great personal risk in order to stop convoys of lorries from delivering concrete and asphalt. These are hardworking, law-abiding citizens who only want to protect their own rights and those of their families. Thanks to the Convention, we now have to fight for those rights in the fields and lanes of rural England.

I agree with the rapporteur. We must pay tribute to the defenders of human rights wherever they may be, in Iran, in Gaza, in Cyprus -- or, thanks to the Convention, in the English countryside. This may seem trivial when compared to the plight of so many people in the world, but the point I am trying to make is that human rights are in danger everywhere; rights that were so hard fought in our own land are as precious to us as they are to anyone else.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Human
• rights
• debate
• June
• 2010