Ukraine report by OHCHR "totally biased" - Russian Foreign Ministry
MOSCOW. May 16 (Interfax) - Moscow believes that the latest report compiled by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concerning the situation in Ukraine serves to fulfill an order to "whitewash" the self-proclaimed authorities in Kyiv, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said.
"We have to note that this report has little in common with the actual state of affairs with human rights in Ukraine. The total absence of objectivity, blatant discrepancies and "double standards" leave no doubt that its authors fulfilled a political order to "whitewash" the self-proclaimed authorities in Kyiv," ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a commentary published on the ministry's website.
"The authors cynically described the actions of certain pro-Russian activists as the reason behind the massacre in Odesa. But they did not say a word about how the extremists and neo-Nazis going berserk burned peaceful citizens of Ukraine alive, finished off those injured and fired at people in the windows of the Trade Unions House. Any information about either the criminal lack of action on the part of law enforcement agencies or the subsequent detentions of federalization supporters is also absent. The whole situation was presented effectively in official Kyiv's interpretation," Lukashevich said.
"The authors of the document once again preferred to overlook the most serious violations of human rights by the self-proclaimed Kyiv authorities, including abductions, reprisals, torture, illegal detentions for political motives, the arbitrary and disproportionate use of force, including military force, etc. What is noteworthy is that on the more than 30 pages of the report they were unable to find any place at all for the subject of the expressions of aggressive Nazism and neo-Nazism in Ukraine," he said.
Lukashevich voiced his "profound regret over the fact that the report effectively serves to justify the criminal "punitive" operation in southeastern Ukraine, but keeps silent on civilian casualties and makes an attempt to impose responsibility for all ongoing human rights violations on the "pro-Russian forces" even though many steps taken by the Kyiv authorities in the southeast [of Ukraine] have the attributes of war crimes and crimes against humanity."
"Obsessive and sometimes even clumsy attempts to make certain facts and information sources match the earlier formulated conclusions - justification of the Kyiv "junta" and demonization of the protest movement in the southeast - are also quite conspicuous. Furthermore, there were selective references to the report of UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues Rita Izsak," Lukashevich said.
"Symptomatically, it was not accidental that the "opus" prepared by OHCHR was presented to the broad public exactly in Kyiv and by no one less than UN Assistant Secretary General [for Human Rights] Ivan Simonovic, who is known for his partisan, biased and non-objective assessments of the human rights situation in Ukraine. The Russian Foreign Ministry already noted on March 17 this year that the stance taken by this UN official called into question the independence and impartiality of OHCHR work. The new report confirms this explicitly," Lukashevich said.
