CIS countries call on int’l community to rebuff attempts at glorifying Nazism - Russian foreign ministry

MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/. Countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States /CIS/ call on the international community to rebuff attempts of glorification of Nazism, according to a statement posted on the official website of the Russian foreign ministry on Friday. The statement was made at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. The statement on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the victory in the Second World War was initiated by Belarus and Russia and joined by Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. "Delegations of our countries paid tribute to all who gave out their lives in the battlefields fighting the Nazis, who were tortured to death in Nazi death camps and prisons, victims of the Holocaust and called to venerate the memory of those fallen in the fight against Nazism," the document said. "In this connection, the statement expressed concern over cynical attempts to bury in oblivion the lessons of that war, to give distorted moral and legal assessments of its results and rehabilitate Nazi criminals and collaborationists." "They called on the world community to take resolute measures to rebuff attempts at glorifying the Nazi movement, at reviving the Nazi ideology and spreading xenophobia and racism," the Russian foreign ministry said. The statement made on behalf of the countries of the former Soviet Union stressed the enduring importance of the Great Victory for our countries and their commitment to defend the truth about that war and its victims, about the contribution of the Soviet people to the defeat of Nazism. The statement was not supported by Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Turkmenistan. "Regrettably, not all the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States joined the statement," Alexei Borodavkin, Russia’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations Geneva office and other Geneva-based international organizations, told TASS. "But it in no way means that we have forgotten about the contribution peoples of these countries made to our common Victory. We remember their human losses in the Second World War. Regrettably, the governments of these countries have evidently forgotten about the sufferings their people went through during that war." Read more