Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan issued a joint statement at the 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, condemning attempts to glorify Nazis on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II — the deadliest conflict in human history.
«We consider any attempt to glorify Nazis and their accomplices absolutely unacceptable,» the statement, read by Russian delegation representative Evgeny Ustinov, says. «We remind that the actions of the main Nazi war criminals, who bear full responsibility for starting and waging World War II, were declared criminal by the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. The tribunal confirmed the facts of the expulsion and extermination of civilians by the Nazis and their accomplices. All these monstrous crimes must be regarded as genocide against the peoples of the Soviet Union.»
The countries also called any attempts to place equal responsibility for starting World War II on the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany «immoral and blasphemous» in relation to the memory of the tens of millions people who died to liberate the world from the horrors of Nazism.
«Our sacred duty is to preserve the truth about our common Victory over Nazism, to prevent the recurrence of ideologies of hatred, discrimination on ethnic, racial, or religious grounds, and other inhumane acts,» the joint statement reads.
