Belarusan Foreign Ministry is enmeshed in contradictions

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Limelighting human rights violations in Western countries, official Minsk automatically neutralizes its own argument about the priority of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.

 This fact was pointed out to the EuroBelarus Information Service by the leader of the International group of the Legal Transformation Centre “Lawtrend” Iryna Dzeshavitsyna and the lawyer of this organization Aliaksei Kazliuk.

Later on the permanent representative of the Republic of Belarus to the local UN office in Geneva Mikhail Chvastou voiced the initiative to submit such reports on continuing basis.

Quality is not up to the mark

How seriously should one consider such initiatives of the Belarusan authorities, whose public image in the sphere of human rights is far from perfect?

Aliaksei Kazliuk noted that the report of the Belarusan Foreign Ministry has already evoked certain reaction both in Mass Media and in the diplomatic medium. “It is hard to say what reaction did the foreign office expect, but it was rather controversial, - stated the expert. –Main arguments of the report’s reviewers have to do with two moments.

The source of the report is a surprise, as Belarus bears the title of “the last dictatorship in Europe” and constantly appears in such sorts of reports. The second vulnerable area is the quality of this report in which there are lots of unverified facts and blunders.

According to Aliaksei Kazliuk, the publication of this report is not a negative fact per se, even if the state that has many difficulties with observing human rights and simple democratic procedures acts as its author. “Besides, human rights defenders even could welcome such concern for triumph of human rights ideas in case this concern is not aimed at being an argument against admitting serious problems within the country. But there are solid grounds to believe that it is this task that the authors of the report were challenged with”, - he noted.

However, according to the expert, the quality of the report will nullify all the efforts of the Belarusan diplomacy at any case. Aliaksei Kazliuk suggested looking through the report for 2012 prepared by the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, which deserves “much bigger trust”.

“It gives an image of the problems with human rights in certain countries (The US and the EU, too). While the report of the Belarusan Foreign Ministry is based on fragmentary data, and the logics of its selection remains a mystery”, - explained the expert.

The report as the means to non-cooperation

Iryna Dzeshavitsyna emphasized the fact that the criticism of the EU that the Belarusan authorities express sounds rather odd. And the thing is not only in the public image of the official Minsk. “We cannot but admit the success in the sphere of human rights achieved by the EU in its countries members. The Nobel Peace Prize 2012 was, among other reasons, awarded to the European Union for its effort to support human rights. There are problems with human rights in the EU countries, but today it has best practices in the sphere of their protection”, - said the expert.

According to her, Belarus is one more time trying to find the substitute to the real cooperation with the UN on the question of human rights. While real cooperation consists in “implementing the recommendations of the UN bodies, inviting the UN experts to visit the country, sensible response to the constructive criticism and shared respect towards the UN human rights mechanisms and towards the international human rights law”.

“Unfortunately, at the moment Belarus doesn’t show any will for cooperation with the UN. The fact that Miklosh Harasti didn’t get the invitation to the country is only one in the line of examples of the absence of cooperation with the EU”, - assumes Iryna Dzeshavitsyna.

However, the experts have stated unanimously that the position of the Belarusan side in the human rights question has changed considerably with the publication of the report. Before that to all the complaints concerning human rights violations the official Minsk answered with the demand to stop the interference in the internal affairs of Belarusan state. But now, with the publication of the report on human rights violations in the Western countries, Belarusan authorities demonstrated groundlessness of their own talking point.

“By publishing the report on human rights violations in certain countries and making statements like that, Belarus technically admits the priority of human rights for the country and publicly agrees that human rights is the sphere that doesn’t have to do with the internal policy of the state”, - noted Iryna Dzeshavitsyna.