A Victory for Human Rights

Calandrella's remarks on the EU election results in Sweden.

Get It Try It

We succeeded. We got in the EU parliament. I wrote about it yesterday but this historic event is worth more than a direct report with no reflection. Rick says we got two seats, one as an observer according to the Treaty of Lisbon.

This is not a victory for file sharing. That would be like saying the success of the greens is a victory for file sharing. (They switched to our policy on file sharing as you might know.) Our successes are a victory for democracy and for its principles. Such as human rights and the right to privacy. Not for file sharing. If file sharing had enjoyed a high priority I'd never have got involved in the campaign but remained a green. I switched parties because democracy is more important than the environment. File sharing is definitely not that important.

And even if we only get one seat - which shouldn't be the case: Rick says we'll have two and he should know best - then it's still an extraordinary victory. When they were discussing the telecoms package we emailed the MEPs like mad in order to draw their attention to what was going on, to get them involved. Now we won't need to do that. Not to the same extent at any rate.

Now one of us will be present in the parliament, ready whenever an important issue is raised to convince the others and explain it to them. Fjellner, Ek and the others have occasionally been involved in our issues but our own parliamentarians will prioritise them. We'll have a MEP who won't leave Brussels right in the middle of a discussion of how people are being denied their freedom of speech without a court decision but instead will wholeheartedly back the people up (in contrast to Fjellner). This can't be overestimated.

Thank you. Thanks to tens of thousands of activists who've worked on these issues. Without our collective efforts the Pirate Party wouldn't have got many votes at all. But now we're in the EU parliament and we have a seat - more than enough votes for it. Perhaps we get two. Our campaign is over but now the real work in Brussels begins, studying new proposals to see if they're hiding any further steps towards a surveillance society which, by ignoring human rights, looks more like a dictatorship than a democracy.

7 June 2009: a party founded two years earlier by an IT professional was voted into the world's largest parliament. 7 June 2009: a party with a focus solely on human rights entered the world's largest parliament. 7 June 2009: we succeeded. Smile today.

WARNING!
E-mail and ALL Internet Communications to and from Sweden, or via servers in Sweden, is monitored by the National Defence Radio Establishment. (Text from Journalistförbundet)