GENEVA, March 8. /TASS/. The collective West is out to turn the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) into an instrument for advancing its geopolitical interests and settling scores with undesirable countries, the Russian delegation to the 52nd session of the HRC in Geneva said on Wednesday.
"We note with regret the continued systematic efforts of the collective West to turn the Council into an obedient tool for advancing its geopolitical interests and settling political scores with undesirable countries. All this is being done with one aim - to divert the Council's attention from its own chronic problems in the human rights sphere," the representative of the Russian delegation Yaroslav Yeryomin said in his speech.
"Today, throughout the European space, in the United States, Ukraine and a number of other countries, laws are being rubber-stamped aimed at suppressing alternative points of view," he stated. Journalists, political and religious figures, human rights activists, national and language minorities are under attack. Hundreds of Russian-language and Russian media outlets have been persecuted. Yeryomin drew attention to the resurgent ideas of Nazism in Europe, which is "already taken for granted." Accomplices of Nazi Germany are officially declared national heroes.
As a result of actions by the United States and Britain, hundreds of thousands of civilians, women, children and elderly and disabled people have lost their lives in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other countries over the past decades, the Russian delegate recalled. "No one has brought Washington or London to justice for this."
Yeryomin urged the Western states and their satellites "to stop scoring points on human rights issues."
"It is you and your unprincipled actions that discredit the very idea of promoting and protecting human rights, turning the Council into a platform for squabbles under far-fetched human rights pretexts," the diplomat concluded.
The 52nd session of the HRC opened in Geneva on February 27. It is considering topical human rights issues, including the fight against racial discrimination and violence against children, the position of persons with disabilities, and measures to ensure the right to food and development. During the forum, which will last until April 4, the 47 countries that make up the Council will also pay attention to the situation in Ukraine, the occupied Palestinian territories, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan and a number of other countries.