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Belarus sees no prospects for cooperation with UN Human Rights Council’s rapporteur, envoy says

 

Belarus considers the mandate of the UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur to be political, does not recognize it and sees no prospects for cooperation with such a mandate, Mikhail Khvastow, Belarus’ permanent representative to the UN Office in Geneva, said during the Council’s session on Thursday.

Mr. Khvastow delivered his speech before a vote on a resolution that provided for extending the mandate of the special rapporteur, Miklos Haraszti, for one more year. The resolution was adopted with 26 votes in favor, three against, and 18 abstentions.

Mr. Khvastow described the resolution proposed by the European Union is “a kind of act of aggression against the Organization of the United Nations” because such resolutions can “unleash the mechanisms of civil wars.”

“The role of special rapporteur, Mr. Haraszti is not connected with the objective of promoting and protecting human rights in our country,” Mr. Khvastow said. “Behind the ostensible concern for the protection of human rights stand the clear political interests of the European Union. We will always be opponents of exploiting the issues of human rights for advancing political or economic interests.”

In the draft resolution, the European Union seeks to impose on Belarus its own vision of how a state should be organized, Mr. Khvastow said.

“Belarus does not suffer from a deficit of democracy, but we will not accept the tyranny of other democracies,” he said. “Experiments by the European Union to export their own democracy are well known. We haven’t seen any successful examples of exporting their democracy but we can see the consequences, which are deception, dissolution, chaos, ruin, and instability. We cannot accept that kind of experiment for our country.”

Belarus knows how and what to do to protect and promote human rights, Mr. Khvastow said. “We have made considerable progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals,” he said. “We have an honorable 50th position in the Human Development Index, which includes 187 countries of the world. We are being told to accept the ideology of a group of Belarusian political opponents. But, distinguished members of the Council, any government builds its policy on the specific collective preferences of the people and not on the wishes of a few individuals.” // BelaPAN