GENEVA, April 19: The UN’s main human rights body absolved Russia from accusations of widespread abuses in Chechnya on Friday and ducked any decision on Zimbabwe.
The annual Commission on Human Rights meeting in Geneva reversed its stance of the past two years and rejected a European Union resolution condemning Moscow for alleged summary executions, torture and other violations by just one vote.
The defeated text, co-sponsored by countries including the United States, also condemned “all terrorist attacks, kidnappings and public executions” by Chechen fighters in the separatist mainly Muslim region.
African countries, with the backing of allies in the Middle East and Asia, narrowly won a vote in the 53-state body to take “no action” on a European Union bid to condemn alleged abuses by the Zimbabwean government under President Robert Mugabe.
But the Commission, several of whose members are themselves targets of rights accusations, voted to maintain pressure on Iraq by accusing the government of President Saddam Hussein of “all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror”.
It also narrowly agreed to keep its special investigator for the Sudan and backed a mildly worded Latin American motion urging Cuba to put as much emphasis on human rights as it did on social progress.
But texts on Iran and Afghanistan were put off to Monday.
Iran was one of the first countries ever to be assigned a country investigator by the U.N. rights body and the mandate would lapse if an EU-led resolution criticising Tehran failed.
States in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, several of which have come under the scrutiny of the Commission, are increasingly uniting to block attempts — mostly by the richer states — to single out countries for censure, diplomats and activists say.
On Friday, it was an alliance between Commission members from the three geographical regions that prevented the EU motion on Zimbabwe even coming to the floor and a similar move on behalf of Cuba was only defeated by one vote.
The “no action” procedure, a device only used in the past by China to avoid censure, was approved by 26 votes to 24 with three countries abstaining.
“This is a frontal attack on one of the most effective human rights tools: the naming and shaming of human rights violators,” the New York-based group Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
Russia, which has long portrayed its struggle against Chechen separatists as being part of the international fight against terrorism, blasted the EU motion as being “politically-motivated and morally untenable.”
Most Islamic states opted to abstain despite the fact the Chechnya is a largely Muslim region.
Rights activists lashed out at the Commission decision, saying it rewarded Moscow for ignoring past demands for an independent probe into accusations that dozens of Chechens had simply “disappeared” after being picked up by security forces.
“They showed a scandalous disregard for the victims of the Chechnya conflict,” said the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH).—Reuters
