Moscow slams European Parliament resolution criticizing human rights in Russia

(Interfax – MOSCOW, June 14, 2013) Moscow views a European Parliament resolution regarding the rule of law in Russia as a set of unwarranted accusations.

“The content of the resolution is a hackneyed set of unwarranted accusations and complaints regarding Russia, and this often openly distorts facts as well. It contains everything but a real desire to solve problems with human rights in Europe,” Russian Foreign Ministry human rights commissioner Konstantin Dolgov said in a commentary posted on the ministry website on Wednesday.

Dolgov suggested the European parliamentarians “have enough to do in their own home.”

“There are quite a lot of serious, including systemic, problems in the human rights field in the EU, which are continuing to worsen amid the financial-economic crisis. This includes massive infringement on the rights and legitimate interests of the Russian-speaking population in Latvia and Estonia, growing neo-Nazism and rightist radical extremism, the violation of the rights of immigrants, the disproportionate use of force by police in dispersing demonstrations, and a lot of other things,” he said.

These problems are well-known in the European Parliament, Dolgov said. “However, the fact that the European parliamentarians have still not made any efficient steps to resolve them reveals deeply rooted double standards in the approaches of a significant part of the EU parliamentary corps,” Dolgov said.

The European Parliament’s resolution is “just another politicized and very unfriendly opus having nothing to do with the real situation surrounding democracy and human rights in Russia and strikingly contradicting the positive dynamism of relations between Russia and the European Union, which was confirmed during the recent summit in Yekaterinburg,” he said.

“The European parliamentarians who supported the resolution have once again manifested their inability to judge our country’s democratic development impartially and without mentorship and ideological cliches,” he said.

Dolgov reaffirmed Russia’s preparedness for constructive dialogue with its European partners and said he hopes that “European lawmakers and those who share their lopsided approaches will finally realize this.”