O. Dupuis. Chechnya: the
empty insistence and the dogmatic spell of the German foreign minister Joskha
Fischer.
Brussels, 4 April 2003. In an interview with Le Monde (published on 4 April),
the German Foreign Minister stated, on the subject of Chechnya, that “Russia
is a strategic partner of the European Union and of NATO, and plays a role in
the security of the continent. It is a geopolitical constant, and we are interested
in the democratisation of Russia. We have always insisted on the respect of human
rights in Chechnya, and on the need for a political solution within the Russian
Federation, to the benefit of the Chechen majority. However, Chechen terrorism
represents a threat, and Russia must defend its territorial integrity.”
Statement by Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party and
Member of the European Parliament.
“Mr Fischer has a very short memory. He has forgotten the tragedy in the
former Yugoslavia, forgotten the reunification of German, forgotten the Czech-Slovakian
divorce, forgotten East Timor, forgotten the (partial) dismantling of the Soviet
empire! And returned to the dogma - reassuring, I imagine - of territorial integrity:
which “Russia must defend”. It is amusing to imagine the composed
tone, the realistic inflexion, and the manly intonation of the Minister’s
statement. But what integrity is he talking about? That of the Chechen corpses?
That of the 200,000 Chechens, most of them civilians, slaughtered by the Russian
occupation forces over the last nine years? That of the thousands of Chechens
tortured to death by the Russian Gestapo? That of the city of Grozny, the first
European city to be razed to the ground since 1945? That of a territory which
is economically and ecologically destroyed? What Mr Fischer is really talking
about is the defence of a perimeter, of a shell, of “frontiers”! For
the death, torture and destruction inside these sacred, intangible borders it
is sufficient - and perhaps this is another of Mr Fischer’s geopolitical
constants - to insist on human rights.”