elarus MFA slams western diplomats' aggressive rhetoric
MINSK, 18 February (BelTA) – The hostile rhetoric of Western diplomatic missions is an open attempt to put pressure on Belarus and interfere in its domestic affairs, Anatoly Glaz, Head of the Information and Digital Diplomacy Office, Press Secretary of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told BelTA commenting on the joint statement by the EU Delegation on behalf of the EU Member States represented in Minsk and the Embassies of the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland regarding investigations taking place in Belarus.
“From the point of view of diplomacy and even common sense, this can be interpreted as a completely ridiculous move. It is not clear who our counterparts are trying to deceive and what they take Belarusians for. They use every occasion to declare their alleged support for the independence of our country, but in reality the things they do show that they could not care less about the sovereignty of Belarus. There is no need to explain that such attacks on the part of diplomatic missions are some kind of open pressure and an attempt to interfere in domestic affairs,” Anatoly Glaz said.
“Moreover, it is even grotesque because the aforementioned investigations deal with financial crimes that are severely punished in any of the countries that signed the statement,” Anatoly Glaz noted.
“To crown it all, we see not only a blatant disregard for the sovereign rights of Belarus, but also lack of understanding of the national legislation, as well as attempts to put themselves above the law enforcement and judicial systems of the country. It is not clear why the diplomats of these countries decided to try on the image of Prometheus, acting as if they were judges, prosecutors, and experts,” Anatoly Glaz said.
According to him, “we see exactly the same type of hypocrisy with the ‘benevolent' sanctions allegedly meant to help ordinary Belarusians, but in fact thousands of our citizens, and not only ours, are already experiencing the opposite.”
“We would not want to question the competence of our counterparts, therefore we just remind that in line with Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter, all UN member states without exception, including the EU countries, the USA, Great Britain and Switzerland, should refrain from intervening in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state, as well as from other actions incompatible with the UN goals. Moreover, each state shall respect the sovereignty of other states, that is their right to exercise all types of power (legislative, executive, administrative and judicial) within their own territory without any outside interference, which is enshrined in Article 2 (1) of the UN Charter,” the spokesman said.
“Belarus is not under their mandate, it is a sovereign state with a full scope of power on its territory and with instruments to protect its national interests, including by ensuring compliance with its national legislation in line with its international legal obligations,” Anatoly Glaz said.
He went on saying: “Such statements look particularly hypocritical against the background of the processes going on in a number of the EU countries, including the developments taking place in one of them since yesterday.” Therefore, as part of its international commitments Belarus reserves the right to provide the authors of the statement with an opportunity to continue ‘to coordinate measures addressing the human rights situation' in their own states.
“I think that the corresponding position will also be officially communicated by us to the EU Delegation in Belarus,” the official representative of the foreign ministry said.
