Protecting human rights defenders in the member states of the Council of Europe

Intervention by Yiorgos Loucaides at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (CoE)

June 2018

Human rights defenders are those people who risk their lives and integrity, struggling to promote individual and political rights – freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience, religion – as well as economic, social and cultural rights. They are fighters for freedom, democracy and peace; fighters for women’s rights and gender equality. They are activists for the rights of minorities, immigrants, LGBTI people, and indigenous peoples; people who expose arbitrariness, irregularities and corruption of states or powerful economic interests.

Given that human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent, working people’s trade union struggles, collective political actions and struggles for socio-economic rights cannot be excluded from being protected from any state or private hindrance and harassment.

The 1998 United Nations Declaration and the 2008 Declaration of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to improve the protection of human rights defenders stress the primary responsibility of states to create a favourable environment for their work. Nonetheless, we are constantly witnessing the inconsistency between declarations and actions, the prevalence of selective sensitivities and double-standards approaches.

To be consistent, we must also expose the persecution underway in CoE member states on the basis of ideological beliefs, such as the ongoing anti-communist persecutions in Europe. In particular, irrespective of our ideological beliefs, we must not close our eyes to the attempt for the full criminalization of the Communist Party in Ukraine.

Neither can we be silent in the face of events such as those that occurred in Poland in May last year when the police invaded a university to interrupt a scientific conference on Marxism, at the same time as a two-year trial of members of the country’s Communist Party is continuing on the accusation that they are supposedly promoting totalitarianism.

To be credible, we need to demand the granting of asylum by CoE States to Snowden so that they protect him from the ongoing US hunt for him.

We must also break our silence with regards activists in countries like Saudi Arabia or Israel – where human rights are literally being persecuted.

Finally, discussing this issue, two days after the Turkish elections, we can only point out that the elections were held in a state of emergency regime and with many of Erdogan’s opponents incarcerated in prisoners, such as human rights defenders, democratic fighters, trade unionists, communists and struggling Kurds of the country. From this podium, we send them a message of solidarity.