Ombudsman slams Amnesty International's conclusions on Russia as ‘far-fetched’

Russian Politics & Diplomacy February 28, 2017, 9:52

In its annual survey on human rights in 159 countries around the world, Amnesty International once again criticized Russia with regards to human rights

MOSCOW, February 27. /TASS/. The findings on the situation in Russia published in Amnesty International’s latest report are far-fetched and don’t reflect the real situation, Russian Foreign Ministry’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Democracy and Rule of Law Konstantin Dolgov told TASS on Monday.

"The report by Amnesty International as far as Russia is concerned certainly contains no surprises," he said in reply to the question how true were the conclusions on Russia. According to him, all the topics covered in the document are well known. "I must say that the assessments are by and large farfetched. Regarding some criteria, they certainly don’t reflect the real situation, and in some points they are already lagging behind the developments," he said.

Dolgov also noted that " normal systematic work on updating both legislation and law-enforcement practice in full conformity with the Russian Constitution and international obligations of the Russian Federation continues," in a number of areas and on issues addressed in the report.

"This work certainly does not depend on any assessments from Amnesty International’s experts, which, let me emphasize it once again, are in many respects not objective, or just lag behind the real course of the events," Dolgov stressed.

In its annual survey on human rights in 159 countries around the world, Amnesty International once again criticized Russia with regards to human rights. It mentioned amendments to Russia’s anti-terror legislation, which it alleged were at variance with international law, mentioned tighter restrictions on freedom of expressing opinions, penalties against human rights activists, and violations in the North Caucasus. It also claimed that Russian NGOs continued to face prosecution and the most critical ones were persecuted on the basis of the "foreign agents" law.

The report says tens of independent foreign-financed NGOs were listed as foreign agents. The Kremlin disagrees with the conclusions found in the latest Amnesty International report on the observance of human rights in Russia. "This is not the first [report]. Such documents are issued regularly. As a rule, we disagree with many aspects," Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week.

"In this particular case, we disagree with the conclusions made," he explained.

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