23/06/2025 | 17:24:17 Thank you very much, President. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to expressly thank our rapporteur Frank SCHWABE for the important work that he has highlighted in his report and also for the work that is being done here in this Assembly at a time when nine EU Member States have decided to openly attack this Assembly, the institution of the Council of Europe, the Convention on Human Rights. It is good that we are defending the Convention on Human Rights through our actions, but the... 01/10/2024 | 20:20:33 Thank you, Mister President. Dear colleagues, I would particularly like to thank you for your many specific comments and suggestions, for example on the dialogue process in Vienna. I believe it is extremely important that we take more action than Europe in our Iran policy, and I would like to pick up on one thing again. We have all analysed the situation very well here. We all agree that the people of Iran deserve our support against this regime. We know that this regime is a danger to us. We... 01/10/2024 | 19:44:05 Thank you very much, dear Mister President. Dear colleagues, In September 2022, two years ago, a young woman wanted to start her studies in Iran. Jina MAHSA AMINI has finally found a place to study. She travels from her Kurdish hometown of Saqqez to Tehran to prepare for her future in this city, but she makes a supposed mistake. She doesn't wear her headscarf in the subway as the regime wants her to. As a result, she is arrested by the morality police, abused, beaten and eventually dies as a... 25/06/2024 | 10:38:01 Thank you, Mister President, Dear rapporteurs, Dear Marharyta, Thank you very much for these good words, for these important Reports, which also propose many changes here in the Assembly, many of which rightly relate to our institution. It has just been said here from the far right, "Young people do not fight for everyone. Young people do not fight for an entire group." I dispute that. I dispute that when we look at what young people from Belarus are organising to finally get rid of this... 17/04/2024 | 18:08:54 Thank you, Madam President, Dear colleagues, Dear Mister Rapporteur, Dear Mister Christophe LACROIX, thank you for this report, which once again expresses that the question of whether lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans people can express their opinions is about democracy as a whole, because it is about the protection of the minority by the majority. This democracy as a whole is under attack, though. It is under attack in Russia, by a Putin who declares LGBTI people to be terrorists. It is... 12/10/2023 | 18:12:46 Thank you, Madam President, Ladies and gentlemen, What we have just heard was a speech that forgot a few things, and therefore it is perhaps important to mention again that, for example, in 1216 the first Armenian monastery was founded in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Mr. Samad SEYIDOV was stating that Armenian life, Armenian culture, which existed for centuries in Nagorno-Karabakh, has been wiped out within four weeks. Nagorno-Karabakh is now deserted. Armenian life is extinguished there. Armenian... 11/10/2023 | 17:13:32 Thank you, Madam President, Ladies and gentlemen, Dear colleagues, Imagine that your worst enemies are following your every move, listening to your every word, reading your most intimate messages, and seeing your photos. When we think of persecution of human rights defenders, we rightly think first and foremost of political prisoners like Osman Kavala. There is also persecution of human rights defenders that is invisible, yet downright brutal. That states illegally monitor their citizens... 11/10/2023 | 16:58:41 Thank you, Mr President, Ladies and gentlemen, please let us not forget; half a week after the anti-Semitic and Islamist Hamas brought terror on Israel. Let's not forget who is the aggressor and who is the victim here. On the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, people were awakened with gunfire and rocket fire. The only safe haven for Jews in the world has been under attack ever since. Last Saturday, more Jews were murdered than at any time since the end of the Shoah, since 1945. The only safe... 10/10/2023 | 18:02:09 Thank you, Madam President, Ladies and gentlemen, The report deals with the greatest danger to our democracy in Europe - the danger of right-wing extremism. Right-wing extremism is a danger because it has consequences that are very concrete and that are very threatening, and I am also very grateful to the Rapporteur for taking up the case of Walter Lübcke - the district president of Kassel, a German region - who was murdered by a neo-Nazis in 2019 because he stood up for refugees. This shows... 19/06/2023 | 15:21:10 Thank you, Mister President. Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Colleagues, Our Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has 306 members and 306 deputies; that is the number of people who died last Wednesday off the Greek coast. With every person who dies in the Mediterranean, a piece of the European civilisation that we are here to defend also dies. It is enough to imagine that we were in that boat to understand. This fundamental rupture of civilisation on the Mediterranean must finally end...