Russia Slates EU Double Standards

Human rights should be a universal value but shouldn’t be used for political purposes, including so-called humanitarian intervention, the head of the international committee of the lower house of the Russian parliament said on Monday.

Although the EU countries and the United States were the first to inscribe human rights values on their banners this does not necessarily mean that they, in fact, observe them, either at home or abroad, said Alexei Pushkov in a special report entitled Human Rights Issues in the EU Member States.

Pushkov noted the “humanitarian interventions” in Libya, where human rights were used as a cover for missile attacks on Tripoli, and he also lashed out at the human rights situation in the Baltic States, highlighting the issue of “non-citizens” and Waffen SS veteran marches.

Ethnic Russians make up about 44 percent of Latvia’s 2.1 million population. At least 319,000 Russian speakers remain without citizenship and have no right to vote.

Latvia maintains that it was illegally incorporated into the USSR in 1940 and then occupied by the Soviets until 1991, during which time hundreds of thousands of Russians immigrated into the republic.

 

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