IPU CALLS FOR ACTION TO DEFEND 187 MPS PROSECUTED WORLDWIDE
11-04-2019At the end of the 140th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly in Doha Qatar, the global Parliamentary community has strongly condemned human rights violations against Members of Parliament worldwide.
Committee on the Human Right of Parliamentarians of the IPU, the in only international body with body with an exclusive remit to support MPs in danger recommended action in the case of the one eighty seven (187) Parliamentarians in thirteen (13) countries whose human rights have been violated.
In a release issued at the on Wednesday 10th April 2019 at the end of the 140th Assembly of the IPU in Doha Qatar.
The committee examined serious allegations of human rights violations affecting sixty –four (64) Parliamentarians from the coalition of the Democratic Unity Roundtable Party (MUD) in the Assembly of Venezuela.
Allegation ranges from ill-treatment, arbitrary detention to other acts obstructing the exercise of Parliamentary mandates.
MUD opposed Mr. Maduro’s Government and obtained a majority in the National Assembly following elections in 2015, government has not provided any funding to the National Assembly since August 2016.
In a recent development, two MPs from the National Assembly were prevented at the airport in Caracas from travelling to the IPU Assembly in Doha.
The committee met separately with MUD members from the National Assembly and members of the Bloque de la Patria Parliamentary group that support Maduro.
And again condemned the systematic harassment of members of the National Assembly, which is part of the large political crises in Venezuela, it reaffirmed its ongoing readiness to assist the Venezuela authorities in finding a solution to the current impasses through dialogue and mediation.
In Turkey over six hundred criminal and terrorism charges have been made against sixty-one (61) MPs from the People’s Democratic Party (HPD) since December 2015 when the constitution was amended to authorize the wholesale lifting of Parliamentary immunity.
Hundreds of trial proceedings are ongoing against HPD Parliamentarians and former parliamentarians, throughout Turkey, ten former parliamentarians continue to be held in detentions.
IPU has confirmed invitation by its members in Turkey to meet with the judicial and executive authorities in a fact-finding mission. The IPU has also stressed the importance of meeting the detained MPs during the mission.
Meanwhile IPU has welcome the release of former MP Frank Diongo and Eugene Diomi Ndongala of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as IPU committee on Human Right had been lobbying intensely on their behalf since 2012 in the case of Ndongala and 2016 in the case of Diongo.
Since June 2012, Ndongala had been targeted by a campaign of political and legal harassment aimed at removing him from the process, the IPU continues to deplore that the MP has not been accorded the Presidential pardon granted to other political prisoners.
In the case of Mr. Diongo, an opposition MP, he was arrested in December 2016 by soldiers of the Presidential guard, he was reportedly tortured and then summarily tried, despite a fragile medical condition as a result of ill-treatment in detention.
The Inter-Parliamentary-Union (IPU) welcomed the Presidential pardon in the case of Mr. Diongo.
In the Philippines, the world Parliamentary body remains concern that for more than two years after her arrest, Senator Leila de Lima is still in detention despite the absence of any corroborated evidence to justify the charges against her.
As IPU calls for her immediate release by the Philippines authorities and for legal proceedings against her to be dropped, failing that, the IPU calls for an IPU trial observer to be allow to monitor the legality and fairness of any trial proceedings.
The IPU has decided o close all but one of the cases of the Maldivian MPs that had been brought to the attention of the committee on Human Rights of Parliamentarians.
At the beginning of the year, the IPU had closed the case of forty-four (44) MPs that had been satisfactorily resolved, leaving seven members of Parliament who had been allegedly subjected arbitrary arrested, detained and legal proceedings started at the time when they were in opposition.
