Russia criticizes commission investigating human rights violations in Syria

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Russian Politics & Diplomacy
“We have called on the IICI more than once to give appropriate attention to the crimes that the militant units, including the terrorist ones, committed on the Syrian territory,” Goltiayev said
GENEVA, June 14. /TASS/. Independent International Commission of Inquiry (IICI) on the Syrian Arab Republic is overfocusing on condemnations of the country’s legitimate government while the hair-raising crimes committed by the extremists and their accomplices remain unnoticed almost in full, Alexei Goltiayev, the head of the Russian delegation said on Wednesday at a session of the UN Council for Human Rights.

“We have called on the IICI more than once to give appropriate attention to the crimes that the militant units, including the terrorist ones, committed on the Syrian territory,” Goltiayev said. “Unfortunately, our calls remained unheeded. The Commission continues overfocusing on condemnations of the legitimate government (…)” while lamost fully ignoring the hair-raising atrocities committed by the militants.”

“Moscow urges the IICI to take up the problem of purges of the (Syrian) Christians and members of other religious minorities by the jihadists,” he said. It is highly improper for the Commission to leave unnoticed the plundering of Syria’s regions, in which the paramilitary units sponsored from abroad are involved in the most immediate way, or the destruction of the infrastructure critical for the population, partly through the airstrikes of the so-called ‘anti-Isis coalition’, or the continued smuggling of historical and cultural values out of Syria and their subsequent reselling on the black markets.”

Goltiayev said the IICI’s calls for cooperation with the so-called International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) for Syria cause bewilderment. Although this agency has not gotten down to work yet, “it is clearly already now that it is flawed, politicized and biased and that it doesn’t meet the criteria of neutrality, independence or fairness.

He described a draft resolution on Syria circulated at the UN Council for Human Rights as a shame on those who had authored it.

“The report replicates the errors of all the previous similar documents,” Goltiayev said. “It’s a hazardous initiative that runs counter to the efforts to restore peace in Syria.”.

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