UN denounces Russian ‘intimidation’ of Ukraine war opponents

The crackdown by Moscow ‘undermines the train of constitutionally assured elementary freedoms’, a UN official says.

Russian investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta's editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov, one among 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winners, speaks with journalists in Moscow [File: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters]

The United Nations has condemned Moscow’s “intimidation” of critics against Russia’s warfare in Ukraine, warning it's undermining elementary freedoms.

Talking earlier than the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, deputy UN rights chief Nada al-Nashif decried the “intimidation, restrictive measures and sanctions towards folks [in Russia] voicing opposition to the warfare in Ukraine”.

These actions, she warned, “undermine the train of constitutionally assured elementary freedoms, together with the rights to free meeting, expression and affiliation”.

Al-Nashif, who's serving as performing excessive commissioner for human rights till new chief Volker Turk replaces Michelle Bachelet, was talking on the opening of the rights council’s 51st session, which runs till October 7.

Al-Nashif listed issues about rights in a spread of nations. However she took unusually harsh goal at Moscow.

She decried “strain towards journalists, blocking of web assets and different types of censorship”, saying such actions have been “incompatible with media pluralism and violate the fitting to entry data”.

“We urge the Russian Federation to rethink measures taken to develop the ‘overseas agent’ label to incorporate people thought-about to be ‘beneath overseas affect’,” she stated.

She additionally known as on the Kremlin to chorus from criminalising “undeclared contacts with representatives of states, overseas or worldwide organisations deemed to be directed towards the ‘safety’ of the Russian Federation”.

There was no rapid Russian response to al-Nashif’s feedback.

Moscow left the rights council in April after it was suspended from the physique over its invasion of Ukraine. Nevertheless it stays an observer and will nonetheless converse up when international locations debate al-Nashif’s remarks on Tuesday.

Earlier this 12 months, the council ordered a high-level inquiry into violations by Russian troops in Ukraine. The investigators are because of report again on September 23.

There was rising strain for the council to additionally flip its gaze on rights abuses inside Russia itself. Rights teams need the council to nominate a particular rapporteur to look at the scenario, however to date no international locations have agreed to take a lead on such a decision.

Western international locations are cautious of what the impact could be if a vote on the difficulty didn't garner sufficient assist throughout the 47-member council.

“Everybody agrees there's a want … however what we haven’t agreed on is timing,” one Western diplomat stated.

A European diplomat agreed. “The influence of a defeated decision could be felt for a very long time.”