Americas

Home page

Americas

Russia slams U.S. for human rights violations

29 October 2012 19:12 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The U.S. adopted wrong approach to human rights protection with intervention of other countries’ internal affairs, Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Foreign Ministry Special Envoy for Human Rights Konstantin Dolgov accused the U.S. of violating the basic international principle of state sovereignty.

"This is one of the reasons why (Moscow) has taken a decision to shutdown USAID activity in Russia," Dolgov said in an interview published at the Ministry’s website.

In September, Russia accused the U.S. official aid agency of trying to influence Russia’s domestic political affairs and ended its activities from October.

According to Dolgov, the U.S. authorities repeatedly violated the rights of journalists, put pressures on the mass media policy. It could hardly be called "an example of democracy."

"No one has a monopoly on setting human rights canons. The U.S. faces such challenges as social inequality, race, ethnic and religious discrimination, rise of xenophobia and racism, indefinite imprisonment with no charges filed," Dolgov said.

He also accused the U.S. of maintaining a biased judicial system, running the prisons outside formal legal field jurisdiction, exercising tortures, governmental attempts to influence the judges, electoral rights restrictions, and infringement into the private lives of citizens.

Meanwhile, Dolgov pointed out the violations of Russian citizens rights in the U.S., including those pertaining to adopted children.

"There are some 100,000 crimes against children in Russia and over 3 million in the U.S. every year," said the diplomat.

Moscow was not afraid of the Western accusations of the human rights situations in Russia and other countries. Instead, Dolgov said, "We are ready for a quite equal, respected dialogue and expect the U.S. side will make conclusions from our report."

The Russian Foreign Ministry has been preparing a new report about the human rights situation in the countries which dare " teach Russia" on that topic, Dolgov said.

In 2011, Russian Foreign Ministry published its first report about human rights situation in the world.