Russian Federation at 49th session of UN HRC

Geneva, 17 March 2022 (TDI): The Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations (UN) in Geneva addressed the 49th session of the UN Human Rights Council on p. 3 agenda.

Mr. Chairman,

We would like to draw back attention to the collective Western countries’ unshakable policy of “double standards” in the implementation of their international obligations to ensure the right to access information.

Over the past years, European countries and the United States, who have been involved in democratic, have consistently drawn a line of media shutdown, which expresses a great view from the political mainstream. The private sector also introduces its contribution to the fight against alternative opinions.

Thanks to the non-transparent policies of social media platforms actively playing with the political leadership of individual countries, content platforms are being rudely censored, leading to the manipulation of public opinion.

Who would have thought a few years ago that social media owners would openly encourage their users to commit acts of violence against representatives of separate nationalities. Meanwhile, this is exactly what is happening now regarding the Russians in the context of the situation in Ukraine.

What is happening today in the global information space can quite be characterized as a complete absence of freedom of speech and freedom of access to information. Not only our country, but all those who try to bring their point of view on the events happening in the world, have deprived such an opportunity.

The West announced a “crusade” on Russian media. In the forefront of the war with Russian media – Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. Other European countries, the United States, are actively chasing them.

The list of victims of rights and blocked media is added almost every hour. With this, millions of citizens are deprived of alternative sources of information under the thought pretext of fighting Russian propaganda, allegedly threatening someone’s security.
Now a large-scale information war has been launched against Russia.

Objects destroyed by the armed forces of Ukraine and nationalist formations, western media is shamelessly reporting the consequences of the Russian military operation, circulating false reports of allegedly indecisive bombing of Ukrainian cities.

At the same time, censorship is introduced without any attempt to justify, with regard to the total, information space. Under these circumstances, it is quite difficult to get objective information about the ongoing military operation, as well as to distinguish frank fakes, including about the allegedly shot by Russia to the Mariupol maternity hospital, for a simple normal normal person.

The same catch and representatives of the UN system authorities, including the HCC, who, instead of checking the unreliable data distributed by them, undoubtedly refer to mythical “sufficient grounds”. I would like to ask, where is your praised impartiality and desire to establish the truth? Therefore, circulating falsehood, including in this hall, we perceive as a conscious provocation towards our country.

You can have different perspectives on everything. But what is obvious is that monopoly is t. n. the right media and states have truly undermined the existing international legal system, which, by definition, should be objective and fair, where there should be different points of view. When this doesn’t happen, the contradictions only grow.

Thank you for your attention