British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab will call on the UN to respond to the human rights situation in Russia, Belarus, China and Myanmar. This statement was circulated by the Foreign Ministry, the minister will speak with it at the opening of the 46th session of the Council in Geneva on Monday, February 22, Bloomberg writes.
According to Raab, in these countries, human rights are systematically violated and international agreements are not respected, which requires coordinated action by the international community. Thus, the head of the department drew attention to the situation with the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK, included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent) Alexei Navalny, who was sentenced to imprisonment in Russia.
Speaking about the situation in Belarus, Raab called the presidential elections held in 2020 rigged. In his opinion, along with “[President Alexander] Lukashenko’s brutal suppression of those who called for change, this has led to a human rights crisis.”
A separate part of the minister’s speech is devoted to the situation in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China due to the violation of the rights of the Uyghurs. “The situation in Xinjiang is beyond what is permissible. Reported gross violations, including torture, forced labor and forced sterilization of women, are excessive and extremely widespread. The scale of the violations can be described as industrial,” he quotes from his speech.
Another part of the speech concerns Myanmar. It says the military countries must step aside, civilian leaders must be liberated, and the democratic desires of the people of Myanmar must be taken into account. The crisis in the country poses an increased danger to the Rohingya people and other ethnic minorities, the document says.
The next session of the UN Human Rights Council will be held from 22 February to 23 March.
Earlier, the ECHR demanded that the Russian government release Navalny from prison as an interim measure. The appeal was filed on January 20, even before the replacement of the suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case with a real one. It was formulated on the basis of Rule 39 of the ECHR Rules.
In 2014, Navalny was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months of suspended imprisonment with a fine of 500 thousand rubles for fraud. The court later extended the trial period for a year. In 2017, the ECHR, at the request of the Navalny brothers, decided that Russia had violated a number of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to them in the Yves Rocher case. In 2018, the Supreme Court of Russia resumed the proceedings due to the decision of the ECHR, but upheld the verdict. On February 2 this year, Navalny’s suspended sentence in this case was changed to a real one after the FSIN announced numerous violations of the suspended sentence.