Euro Parliament cuts Russian human rights commissioner's speech short

On the eve of an appearance by Konstantin Dolgov, Commissioner of the Foreign Ministry of Russia on the Issues of Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, at the European Parliament, organizers allotted only three minutes for his speech and interrupted him even before these minutes expired.

"I was given only three minutes according to the regulations," Dolgov said. "It is very little, because the rest were speaking for 15-20 minutes, and some so-called civil society representatives delivered speeches more than once", he stressed.

"As far as I understood, they did not even let me use those three minutes," the diplomat added, explaining that he was interrupted, when he started to quote the statistics of the human rights situation in Russia, as the European Parliamentarians did not like these data.

According to him, in general, the debate in the European Parliament about the human rights situation in Russia was "absolutely biased ".

Konstantin Dolgov said that during his speech, he began to adduce figures of how much money was spent from the Russian budget for supporting NGOs, including those protecting human rights, and that there was no oppression of sexual minorities in Russia. However, according to Dolgov, it was obvious that MEPs had not read the Russian laws, which they had criticized.

"However, I consider it positive that we have delivered a speech and for at least three minutes informed about the human rights situation", he stressed.

Voice of Russia, Interfax
http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_23/Euro-Parliament-cuts-Russian-human-rights-commissioners-speech-short-4706/
23/1/14