OREANDA-NEWS “One of the UN’s most important duties is to protect human rights, and one of its most important institutions is the Human Rights Council (EJC), but it is very important that no country should be able to use human rights as a means of applying pressure on another country”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó declared in his speech at the 34th session of the Council in Geneva on Tuesday.
“It is very important that it should not be possible to take any country hostage by citing human rights in the case of a simple interstate dispute”, the Minister said.

Mr. Szijjártó said that in his opinion the over-politicising of human rights still exists in the world, but this clearly undermines the credibility of the struggle for human rights. “As the newest member of the EJC, Hungary will be doing everything possible to ensure that the Council avoids situations in which reports on various countries are written by bureaucrats who have never even been to the given country”, he stressed.

“We will be doing everything possible to ensure that such reports are balanced, are prepared in consultation with the given country, and provide a fair view of the state of affairs that may be observed in that country”, he declared.

“Hungary will also be doing everything possible to ensure that the EJC avoids situation in which “so-called civil organisations that clearly represent various political interests dictate totally unbalanced and biased reports on certain countries without listening to the opinions of that country’s most significant people”, he added.

In his speech, Mr. Szijjártó mentioned three main topics with respect to human rights. He said the fact that hatred against Christians is increasing in the world was an extremely dangerous tendency, repeating the statistical data according to which four out of every five people who are persecuted for their religious beliefs worldwide are Christian.

“Terrible crimes are committed against Christian communities in many places around the world. Tens and hundreds of thousands of people are being driven from their homes, and there are Christian communities that have been totally eradicated. Of these, we are fully aware of the atrocities committed by the Islamic State jihadist organisations, but we are also monitoring other dangers to Christian communities living in the Middle East and bordering regions”, he said.

“For some reason the world, and especially the western world, approaches the issue of anti-Christian sentiment in a very hypocritical way. This leads to the development of a false context, as if a hated of Christians was the mildest form of negative discrimination. We regard this as totally unacceptable. IF we look at the related statements by international organisations, they hardly include the fact that the protection of Christian communities must be maintained. They usually just talk about having to protect various religious groups, but not about protecting Christians. This approach must be changed. The protection of Christian communities throughout the world must be taken seriously”, he said.

“Accordingly, Hungary is proposing two things: firstly, the International Criminal Court (ICC) must be called upon to not leave unpunished any crime that is committed anywhere in the world against Christians. We must put an end to the application of double standards. Secondly, international communities must assure the right of Middle Eastern Christian communities to return to their homes following the end of the conflict from which they have fled once the area is fully liberated”, Mr. Szijjártó continued.

“Unfortunately, in our experience Christian communities that have been driven from their homes are unable to return home and are often not allowed to return for security reasons, not even if their home region has been fully liberated. For this reason, we propose that administrative zones are established in these regions, where these communities are guaranteed freedom and security.

The most rational solution would be if these zones were protected by a heavy UN presence”, the Hungarian Foreign Minister said.

The second major topic that the Minister mentioned was the mass migration of illegal immigrants. “Today, the world is facing several major challenges, but the most serious of these challenges is undoubtedly the migration crisis”, he said. “Unfortunately, there is also a hypocritical approach within this field, which is not helping to solve the problem, and in fact is only making it worse. Honesty and openness are required here, and we must only apply the solutions permitted by international law. International law states that the right to a secure life is a fundamental human right, but in international law there is no mention of the fact that people can choose a safe country for themselves and make their way there illegally via several other countries”, Mr. Szijjártó explained.

“So instead of encouraging people to risk their lives and travel thousands of kilometres, we should be concentrating on taking help to the immediate vicinity of their current location, to countries where they are already safe. This would also allow them to return to their homes quickly following the end of the conflict. If the international communities continues to encourage people to migrate far away from their homes, it will only be providing further fuel for people smuggling networks”’, the Minister stated.

The third topic was the protection of national minorities. “We have seen that the insufficient protection of national communities was often ended in bilateral or multilateral conflicts. Whereas national communities should in fact be regarded as bridged between peoples, countries and cultures. Accordingly, the EJC should provide solutions that enable Member States to protect their national minorities and monitor the enforcement of their rights”, Mr. Szijjártó said.