All news

Minsk calls UN Human Rights Council resolution on Belarus "absurd"

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry said that "the resolution runs counter to the spirit of current relations between Belarus and the European Union"

MINSK, July 12. /TASS/. The resolution of the United Nations Human Rights Council on Belarus is absurd both in its contents and the idea of its adoption, Directorate for Information and Digital Diplomacy of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said in a comment released on Friday.

"The resolution runs counter to the spirit of current relations between Belarus and the European Union. We are confident that the mandate of the special rapporteu’s on Belarus and the resolution should be abolished," the foreign ministry said.

The ministry stated that the resolution that was initiated by the EU member states is unpromising, as can be seen from the results of the voting. "The document was not supported by the majority: 27 out of 47 Council’s member states were either against (six countries) or abstained (21 countries)," the foreign ministry noted.

Still, the mechanism of the Council is that once a resolution is adopted, its authors find it difficult to reject it in the future, the ministry said. "It amounts to the recognition of the inadequacy of the policy of pressure on Belarus through the special rapporteur’s mandate that our country does not recognize, regarding it as an unjust and discriminative measure," the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said.

The resolution published on Friday says that the Council is concerned about the situation with human rights and freedoms in Belarus, especially groundless restrictions and excessively burdensome processes linked to the execution of rights to the freedom of peaceful assembly, association and expression. The UN Human Rights Council called on the Belarusian authorities to cooperate with the special rapporteur on Belarus, providing her a possibility to visit this country.