Belarusan Foreign Ministry accuses EU, US and Canada of human rights violations

The Foreign Ministry’s report “Most Resonant Human Rights Violations in Certain Countries 2013” tells about the situation in the countries which criticize the actions of the Belarusan authorities.

Yury Ambrazevich, the Head of the Directorate for Multilateral Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus, presented the report “Most Resonant Human Rights Violations in Certain Countries 2013” on Monday, February 10.

As he explained at the presentation, the report concerns only those countries which introduced sanctions against Belarus basing on their assessments of the situation with the human rights in our country. And the countries at issue are USA, Canada and most European Union countries. There are 23 countries that are examined in the report altogether.

This is the second report on the most resonant human rights violations in certain countries issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was written on the basis of various sources, like the results of Human Rights Council’s UPRs, observations of the HRC’s special thematic procedures and the UN treaty bodies, information of international, regional, and national governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as data collected from open sources by the diplomatic missions of Belarus, says the press service of the Belarusan Foreign Ministry.

“Since the end of the Cold War the issue of human rights has unquestionably come into increased global prominence. What is more, the international community has in recent years elevated human rights to the level of importance at the United Nations that only the issues of peace, security and development heretofore enjoyed”, - the report says. – “At the same time no other issue on the international agenda appears currently to be as polarizing as human rights. Indeed, international relations have been increasingly viewed and conducted today through the prism of human rights”.

Thus, sums up the Foreign Ministry, “appreciating those specific features of historic experience of each other is the first, and perhaps, the only way to treat the issue of human rights in a non-confrontational and unbiased manner. I did my best to articulate such a vision in an article titled Human Rights: What and Who Made Them Divide the World?, which was published by Russia in Global Affairs in June 2013. There is a genuinely hope that all of us will ultimately come to embrace the above approach, because in a world of ever-rising global threats and challenges countries have no such luxury as to divert attention from them by engaging in policies aimed at «remaking» each other in someone’s own image”.