UN, Nov 3 The West is again trying to disrupt the adoption by the UN General Assembly committee of the annual Russian resolution on the fight against the glorification of Nazism — a number of countries want to amend the text about Russia’s alleged use of this topic for the purpose of a special military operation in Ukraine, Grigory Lukyantsev, director of the department of multilateral cooperation on human rights of the Russian Foreign Ministry, told reporters.
Earlier, Moscow submitted to the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly a draft resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism. The committee will vote on it on Friday. Then, if passed in committee, the General Assembly would have to decide in December whether to approve the draft resolution.
Draft Resolution The document recommends that countries take appropriate concrete measures, “including in the legislative and educational fields, in accordance with their international human rights obligations, in order to prevent a revision of the history and outcome of the Second World War and denial of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the Second World War.»
The authors of the document strongly condemn incidents related to the glorification and propaganda of Nazism, in particular the application of graffiti and drawings with pro-Nazi content, including on monuments to the victims of the Second World War.
The document urges states to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination by all appropriate means, including, if circumstances so require, legislation.
In addition, the draft resolution strongly condemns the use of educational materials, as well as rhetoric in teaching, that promotes racism, discrimination, hatred and violence on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, religion or belief.
Amendment by the West Meanwhile, Albania, Australia, Japan, Guatemala, Liberia, the Marshall Islands and North Macedonia submitted an amendment to the Russian draft resolution.
She proposes adding a paragraph to the text of the resolution stating that the General Assembly “notes with concern that the Russian Federation sought to justify its territorial aggression against Ukraine with the supposed goal of eliminating neo-Nazism.”
In addition, the amendment «emphasizes that the use of neo-Nazism as a pretext to justify territorial aggression seriously undermines genuine attempts to combat neo-Nazism.»
On Friday, before the vote on the draft resolution, there will also be a vote on an amendment to it.
Assessment of Moscow «Western delegations are not giving up attempts to disrupt the adoption of our document. They introduced an amendment. This is nothing more than a procedural provocation. In essence, this is not an amendment that should improve the draft. This is just some text that is thrown at us like a dead cat so that we ourselves abandon our resolution,” Lukyantsev said.
He explained that Western countries are counting on the fact that if the General Assembly amends the text of the Russian resolution, Moscow will vote against its own document.
“This is another attempt to disrupt the adoption of this resolution, just like last year. The authors of this amendment are trying in this way to force us, the co-authors, to ultimately vote against the resolution. But they will not achieve this,” Lukyantsev told reporters.
According to him, a number of delegations have already told Russian diplomats that “opponents approached them and campaigned for their amendment.”
«Some delegations call this not an amendment, but a political ploy, since Western representatives vote against the resolution in any case — both if the amendment is adopted or not,» the diplomat said.
In 2022, Western countries resorted to a similar trick. But the resolution was adopted. Russia stated after the vote that it dissociated itself from the amendment that was then included in the text and did not recognize the provision included in it. At that time, 106 countries, including Israel, voted for the resolution in the Third Committee. However, not only the USA and Ukraine were against (as was the case in recent years), but also Germany, Britain, France, Japan, Italy, Georgia, the Baltic countries, Hungary.