EU action on Darfur and rendition must match human rights rhetoric

2.00.00pm GMT Wed 12th Dec 2007

Sarah discussing Darfur with Mr. Osman after the presentation of his award.

In the week of International Human Rights Day the European Parliament awarded the Sakharov Prize for freedom to Sudanese lawyer and native of Darfur Salih Mahmoud Osman, made a formal declaration of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and debated the EU's human rights record in 2007.

London's Liberal Democrat MEP Baroness Sarah Ludford congratulated Mr Osman and called in the debate for the European Union to live up to Mr Osman's call for a muscular intervention to end the human rights atrocities taking place in Darfur. She also slated EU governments for their continuing failure to come clean over complicity in the CIA practice of kidnapping, torture and secret detention.

Sarah Ludford said:

"Salih Osman is a worthy winner of the Freedom prize, a hugely courageous man who has been rightly recognised for his tireless and selfless legal work to end impunity for human rights abusers in Darfur and throughout Sudan."

"But the EU would be hypocritical to honour him while ignoring his insistence that the EU must take more concrete action to protect the victims, even putting our own peacemaking troops in there prepared to fight, not just observe. Europe must do more to beef up its intervention capacity for crisis situations. "

"The EU can also not afford warm words of self-congratulation about our human rights values when EU governments refuse any accountability in response to the credible allegations of collusion in CIA extraordinary rendition."

Reacting to the attempted disruption with chants by right-wing MEPs, including Tories, of the signing by the European Parliament, Commission and Council Presidents of the EU Charter of Rights, Sarah Ludford said:

"One of the rights enshrined in the Charter is the right to free speech so the thuggish attempt to drown out its champions was particularly ironic and counter-productive. Why some MEPs want to deny their citizens rights against abuse of power by EU institutions is a mystery."