GENEVA, September 1. /TASS/. Russia has sent letters to various UN human rights officials, asking them to condemn Estonia’s draft bill aimed at temporarily depriving Russian and Belarusian citizens residing in the country of their right to vote in the upcoming municipal elections, the Russian Permanent Mission to the UN Office in Geneva said.
The mission said in a statement, published on its Telegram channel on Thursday, that governments of Baltic countries "continue to shock us with totalitarian behavior that directly infringes upon civil and political rights of persons on the basis of their ethnicity." The Estonian Justice Ministry’s recent initiative to temporarily deprive Russian and Belarusian citizens residing in Estonia of their right to vote in the upcoming municipal polls is a yet another illustrative example of it, the diplomatic mission added.
According to the statement, "tens of thousands of the country’s residents and taxpayers will be subjected to straightforward discrimination only because their free opinions and beliefs may differ from the Tallinn government’s ideas and policies."
"This initiative runs counter not only to the Constitution of Estonia, but also to the country’s international commitments, including those undertaken within the framework of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination," Russian diplomats said.
The Russian Permanent Mission to the UN Office in Geneva said it had sent official letters to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk and four special rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC): Special Rapporteur on the right to education Farida Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on minority issues Fernand de Varennes, Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights Alexandra Xanthaki and Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance K.P. Ashwini.
"In these letters, we called upon the chief UN human rights official and HRC experts to pay closest attention to the Estonian government’s discriminatory initiatives and to condemn them, along with other manifestations of Russophobia in Baltic countries," the statement says.
Estonian Justice Minister Kalle Laanet said his ministry had drafted a bill to temporarily deprive citizens of Russia and Belarus, who are residing in the country, of their right to vote in local elections. According to the Justice Ministry of Estonia, the country is home to around 67,000 Russian passport holders, who are entitled to cast their ballot during municipal elections. At the same time, only citizens of Estonia and other EU countries can participate in these elections as candidates.