European Parliament Plenary Session: Younous Omarjee (France Insoumise)  & #BlackLivesMatter
Channel: The Left in the European Parliament
Date: 2020-06-18

A tragic news has become a major political event.

The chilling eight minutes of the assassination of George Floyd mobilised hundreds of thousands of people around the world to fight structural racism and police violence. And our indignation this afternoon is an indication of how much these acts offend the values we share.

This is why we stand with this movement, and the victims of racism and police violence, so that a concrete result can be achieved from their demands for respect and equality.

In light of this event, we must also look lucidly at our own history. And we would see that this event stems from centuries of oppression against blacks in the United States and inequality in Europe.

Let us keep in mind that our European history oscillated like a pendulum between barbarism and civilisation.

It was in Europe, despite Reason and the Enlightenment, that the worst theories of race hierarchy were born, to justify conquests, slavery, colonisation and the Holocaust.

If we want to eradicate evil, there is a whole mental state that we must continue to deconstruct.
It is also a whole system of economic violence that must be combated, which makes racial inequalities and social inequalities overlap.
In this work which we have to accomplish, symbols like memory have an importance.
And that is why, we must proclaim from this European Parliament, as our resolution calls for, that slavery is a crime against humanity, and let us do this act of civilisation together.