How Russia Stopped the EU From Violating Human Rights and the
Rule of Law
Russia blocks UN Resolution that would have allowed EU to violate Libyan
sovereignty by sinking without any court order ships in Libyan ports
By Alexander Mercouris
May 08, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "RI"
- The role reversal between Russia and the West becomes ever starker.
During the Cold War the West supposedly stood for international law and human
rights. The USSR was supposed to represent the antithesis.
What we now see is the EU proposing to the UN Security Council a Resolution that
would permit the European powers to launch military strikes to destroy ships
supposedly owned by human traffickers in Libyan ports.
Not only would this violate whatever tattered vestige of sovereignty Libya still
has left. Use of military force to destroy ships in this way without any
pretense of due legal process is about as gross a violation of the basic legal
principles of the presumption of innocence and of the right to trial and due
process as it is possible to get.
It has taken Russia — the country always criticised in the West for its supposed
lack of conscience, violation of human rights and disrespect for law — to point
this out.
Not only has Russia pointed it out, it has made it clear that the proposal is
completely unacceptable and that Russia will veto any resolution based upon it.
In the words of Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the EU, “apprehending
human traffickers and arresting these vessels is one thing. But destroying them
would be going too far.” Destruction of ships without a court order and the
consent of the host country would amount “to a contravention of the existing
norms of international law”.
Russia’s objections are so obviously correct that the EU has been forced
shamefacedly to accept them. Latest reports suggest that the proposal has been
dropped and that the EU is now working on a more restricted mandate involving a
search and rescue role for Europe’s military alongside powers to stop and seize
traffickers’ boats at sea.
What this episode once again shows is that the popular Western image of Russia
as a brutal, lawless place has no truth.
Russia is unaffected by Mediterranean migrant flows. However if it were as
indifferent to humanitarian considerations or to the rule of law as is
repeatedly said, then it is difficult to see why it would object to the
proposal. It is not as if Russia gains anything by doing so.
The reality is that Russia is far from being a country without conscience or one
which is indifferent to human rights and to the rule of law. On the contrary
Russia’s history makes Russia particularly sensitive about these matters.
By contrast it is Europe that is taking its commitment to human rights and the
rule of law increasingly for granted, and is therefore becoming increasingly
indifferent to how it violates them.
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