\u201cAs an MEP, as a young lawmaker, this is a situation to learn from,\u201d Sieper told POLITICO. \u201cIt shows me that you always have to double check the information, even if you work with people that you build trust with on prior events.\u201d<\/p>\n
The RSF is involved in a bitter power struggle with the Sudanese military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country\u2019s de facto ruler. The conflict has led to the deaths of more than 150,000 people, with a further 12 million forced to flee their homes. The United Nations has described it as the world\u2019s largest humanitarian crisis. Human Rights Watch, a campaign group, said last year that RSF attacks could be classed as ethnic cleansing and possible genocide.<\/p>\n
The episode renews questions about how people gain access to members of the European Parliament. While on this occasion the event was stopped at the last minute \u2015 and there is no suggestion their invitation was anything but a genuine mistake on Sieper\u2019s part \u2015 the past few years has seen a string of lobbying scandals in the assembly, including allegations of undue influence by representatives from the governments of Qatar and Morocco, and the Chinese tech firm Huawei. <\/p>\n
The latest case highlights \u201chow deliberate the actions of harmful groups are to infiltrate our Parliament,\u201d Sieper said. \u201cI\u2019m quite certain that I was chosen by the RSF people deliberately because I am young, I\u2019m unexperienced, I\u2019m a non-attached member, so people know that I don\u2019t have a big group behind me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Territorial integrity<\/p>\n
Gamaal El Attar, executive director of the International Federation for Rights and Development (IFRD), a Belgium-based human rights group, said the EU\u2019s sanctions on the Sudanese group, introduced in 2023, had made them more active in Brussels. \u201cThis has encouraged the militias to find a way back to the European Parliament to counter-lobby our work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The IFRD alerted other MEPs when the two men\u2019s identities became known. Those two MEPs \u201ccontacted Sieper in a very nice way because it\u2019s a little bit delicate to tell someone that you invited two militia guys,\u201d El Attar said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAs an MEP, as a young lawmaker, this is a situation to learn from,\u201d Sieper told POLITICO. \u201cIt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[1789,6178,6659,2000,299,5187,44400,1824,4582,11582,11665,2597,6489,5111,7965,6860,48,31621,2663,11144,2824,16,15,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-449356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-conflict","10":"tag-crisis","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-genocide","15":"tag-germany","16":"tag-human-rights","17":"tag-lobbying","18":"tag-meps","19":"tag-military","20":"tag-morocco","21":"tag-parliament","22":"tag-platforms","23":"tag-qatar","24":"tag-rights","25":"tag-roberta-metsola","26":"tag-sanctions","27":"tag-sudan","28":"tag-tanks","29":"tag-uk","30":"tag-united-kingdom","31":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115262568784212637","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}