Comments of the Russian MID on the EU authority on human rights

Friday, 24 March 2017

Comments of the Russian MID on the EU authority on human rights

March 22, 2017

The EU has long lost its moral right to act as an authority on human rights issues

The following statement is an important step taken by the MID. Until recently, they refrained from directly pointing out that the European nations that are orchestrating the anti-Russian campaign are the same nations that participated in the war on the USSR in 1941-1945. Some of them sent their armies to invade Russia and to burn Russian towns and villages and to hang Russians women and children, some of them were busy producing tanks, ammunition and ropes, while others were treating the injured invaders and financing the war.

Let’s list the crimes of the Western nations against the Russians every time we write about their political representatives, governments and military alliances.

Comment by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information and Press Department on a declaration by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on behalf of the European Union on Crimea and the European Parliament resolution on Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia and situation in Crimea

March 20th, 2017

We were perplexed by the March 18 declaration by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on behalf of the European Union on Crimea, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the reunification of Crimea and Sevastopol with Russia. Apparently, Brussels remains detached from reality and refuses to acknowledge the obvious, positive changes in the lives of the people in the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, which are now part of the Russian Federation.

Instead of repeating unsubstantiated assertions by Kiev regarding alleged “human rights violations” and the “annexation of Crimea,” European officials wishing to receive objective information regarding the situation in Russia’s Crimea would do better to visit the peninsula and see with their own eyes what is happening there, as many unbiased public and political figures from EU member countries have already done.

The EU invokes international law but seems to forget about its gross violations in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and, for that matter, Ukraine, with the goal of toppling unwanted regimes in which its member countries took an active part. The EU has yet to respond adequately to the regular marches and rallies of Waffen-SS veterans in Latvia, which not only insult the memory of millions of victims, but also ignore the rulings of the Nuremberg Tribunal, as well as the UN General Assembly resolutions on inadmissibility of the glorification of Nazism.

Fabrications about “threats to international security” and the “ongoing militarisation” of Crimea also come as a surprise. The EU prefers not to notice the deployment of US missile defence elements in Romania and Poland, the ever more frequent NATO exercises in the Black Sea, and the increased NATO military presence in Eastern Europe, which have a negative impact on the security situation in Europe, including the Black Sea region.

The attempt to portray the EU’s blanket discriminatory restrictive measures against Crimeans as part of the “policy of non-recognition” of the reunification of Crimea with Russia appears cynical. In the context of EU visa policies, they are reminiscent of “visa reprisals” and run counter to a range of norms of international law. The same applies to the EU’s appeals to UN member states to impose sanctions on Russia.

The adoption by the European Parliament on March 16 of the resolution on Ukrainian Political Prisoners in Russia and Situation in Crimea once again demonstrates a prejudiced approach to human rights. Clearly, the EU has long lost its moral right to act as an authority on human rights issues. For the sake of dubious political expediency, Brussels prefers to turn a blind eye to the actions of the Kiev regime and the Ukrainian nationalists blocking water and energy supplies to Crimea, non-payment of pensions and benefits, as well as the blocking of railway links with southeastern Ukraine, not to mention the numerous migrant issues in the EU itself, including the disappearance of migrant children and violations of their rights, the status of “non-citizens” in Latvia and Estonia, growing racism and xenophobia throughout the European Union, and the blatant human rights violations in the course of involvement of a number of EU countries in the infamous secret CIA prisons. Those are the cold hard facts. However, MEPs in their resolutions on Crimea prefer to see only the mythical deterioration of the situation of the Crimean Tatar population, despite the fact that real progress in restoring its rights was made only after reunification of the peninsula with Russia.

To reiterate, Crimea and Sevastopol are an integral part of the Russian Federation, and methods of political or economic pressure, to which the European Union persistently resorts, are futile efforts and will not change this fact.