"The worst year in the history of Russia"

The US State Department published a report on the situation with human rights in the world

The State Department of the United States published on Thursday the next annual report on the situation in compliance with human rights in the world. Russia in it did not enter the number of rude violators of these rights - perhaps only because it is already subjected to tireless criticism from the American authorities. According to the expert of the human rights organization Freedom House, due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, human rights violations in other countries have gone a little into the shadow, and the state departments report is designed to correct this situation.

If the scale of the geopolitical enemies of America coincided with the list of the most rude violators of human rights on Earth according to the state department, then the main opponents of Washington would be Iran, Syria and China. There was a place in the State Department’s report for self-criticism: “Last year was marked by numerous racial incidents that have occurred in the United States. Therefore, we are very critical to ourselves and do not believe that any country has the right to rest on his laurels in compliance with human rights,” the Secretary of State John Kerry said in the preamble.

“Not a single nation will be able to realize its creative potential if it will have the freedom of citizens,” said the State Secretary. “This also applies to our allies in the fight against extremism, in particular, Saudi Arabia, which suppresses freedom of expression.” According to Kerry, "fair legal proceedings, freedom of speech and freedom of conscience are still the cornerstone of the US policy." "At the same time, today we pay more and more attention to new challenges that arise in the field of human rights: human trafficking, lack of unhindered access to the Internet, disrespect of minority - ethnic and confessional rights, for example, Iraqi Yechains, persecuted by Islamists, as well as disabled people and representatives of LGBT. We are not lastly excited by the encroachments on the safety and life of journalists, the lives of journalists, and the lives of journalists. The apotheosis of which was the mass murder of Charlie Ebdo journalists. "Al-Qaeda", "Pakistani Taliban" and "Boko Haram," the preamble says to the report.

“In our report,” added John Kerry, “we have not passed by the fact that anywhere human rights are not violated in such a flagrant way as in the zones of armed conflicts, that we see on the examples of Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, the Central African Republic and Ukraine, which became a victim of aggression, unleashed by its powerful neighbor, in the zones of the battle. Two hundred and thirteen million people are now located, including women and children. "

According to the law, the report of the State Department should be released annually on February 25. Late happened before, but never in the history of these reports, his exit was delayed for such a long time as this time - one hundred and twenty days. Perhaps the delay would be even more if it were not for the threat of a republican senator Ted Cruise to fine the State Department in the amount of five percent of its budget for each month of delay. The Foreign Ministry itself explains the delay in the unusually dense schedule of foreign trips by Secretary of State Kerry (and the heavy injury of the leg that he suffered), and make a presentation of the report in his absence, they say, extremely disrespectful to the priority topic of American diplomacy. Critics, on the contrary, consider the publication a care of a neglect of the problems of human rights, and they see the reason that the Obama administration led complex negotiations with Iran, Cuba and China, not wanting to interfere with these negotiations about the state of human rights in the contracting countries. This is especially true for Iran, with whom the administration, in addition to the nuclear dialogue, hoped to establish long -term cooperation of the wide plan. Judging by the harsh criticism of Iran in the report of the State Department, these hopes did not come true at this stage. The last round of the US-Chinese negotiations in the framework of economic and strategic dialogue ended to no avail.

There are 895 political prisoners in Iran today, of which 30 are journalists, including American, accused of espionage , the report says. They treat them in prisons anti -Gumanno. In Iran, 721 people were executed during the reporting period, often without trial and investigation, and not 268, as officially stated. The number of executions is growing, as the persecution of people who turned to Christianity is growing and; Last year, 18 people were convicted for this. Tehran also continues to sponsor terrorism at different points of the Middle East and maintain the bloody regime of Bashar al -Assad, guilty in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The political system of China is named in the report of a ruthlessly repressive, anticipally punishing any manifestations of dissent , primarily among the national minorities of Uyghurs and Tibetans.

Cuba no longer sponsor terrorism , in which the State Department assured the Congress in order to achieve his consent to open an American embassy in Havana. The Castro brothers regime was also awarded praise for the removal of many restrictions on traveling his citizens abroad, but was also convicted of refusing to issue foreign passports to a number of oppositionists or their oppression on the return of home.

Part of the report of the State Department dedicated to Russia , at the request of the RS, is commented by the Deputy Director for the Scientific Work of the leading human rights organization Freedom House Arch Paddington :

- The reports of the State Department enjoy the great trust in civil society, since the facts in them are invariably carefully verified, the terms are clearly defined, and the conclusions are balanced. In the current document, relatively little space is allocated by violations of human rights in the east of Ukraine, and this, in my opinion, is the result of the fact that it is very difficult to get truly reliable information about the abuse of the abuse and their local protege: the independent press from the fighting area has been expelled; Even from the settlements captured by the Islamists in Iraq and Syria, more objective information is received than from the self -proclaimed "DPR" and "LPR". As for Russia itself, the report cannot be considered examples of judicial arbitrariness, violations of electoral legislation, suppression of freedom of speech, independent media, non -governmental organizations. At the same time, Cuba and China in the latest report are said more than about Russia, while the Cuba as a whole is now moving in a positive direction, and China and Russia are towards deterioration.

The report cannot be considered examples of judicial arbitrariness, violations of electoral legislation, suppression of freedom of speech, independent media, non -governmental organizations in Russia

- Why did Russia be awarded a report of less condemnation than Cuba or China?

- It seems to me that the whole thing is in the desire of our diplomats for balance. Russia has recently been subjected to tireless criticism, therefore, I believe, the State Department decided that it should be taken out of the shadow of other violators, whose unsightly acts were obscured by the central confrontation of Russia and the West. We should not forget that from the point of view of the State Department, it is worthless to paint in only black color to the country with which America has important points of contact, for example, the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and the spread of nuclear weapons. A report on human rights Freedom House , published a few days ago, was not constrained by considerations of high diplomacy, to which the State Department is addicted, and we without any offenses state that 2014 was apparently the worst in the modern history of Russia in the sense of observing human rights, ”says Arch Paddington .

Two days before the publication of the report of the State Department in the capital of South Korea Seoul on the initiative of the United States and other Western countries, the UN Bureau for monitoring the state of human rights in the DPRK was opened. The response of the North Korean authorities to this “provocative”, in their opinion, was the condemnation of two southern Koreans, detained last year on charges of collecting closed information and attempts to impose a “bourgeois lifestyle and culture” last year. The prosecutor's office demanded for the accused the death penalty.