VLADIMIR MAKEI, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Belarus, said that global security threats were on the rise, due to hybrid wars and criminal use of modern information technologies which fuel extremism and terrorism.  Extending his Government’s full support for the work of the World Health Organization (WHO), he warned against politicizing the pandemic.  Highlighting that 2021 celebrates the eightieth anniversary of the Great Patriotic War, he said he regretted seeing dangerous trends of skewing the moral and legal assessments of that war’s outcomes.  Thus, Belarus adopted a new law foreseeing criminal accountability for the rehabilitation of Nazism, he announced.

“Today Belarus is the subject of a large-scale hybrid war,” he went on to say, accusing Western countries of exerting pressure on his nation for choosing a path towards a strong sovereign and prosperous State.  The West had fabricated a conflict with refugees on the western border of Belarus in order to justify its destructive actions against his country.  Moreover, the European Union did not respond to his country’s long overdue proposal to hold high-level consultations on illegal migration and the Union’s partners stopped funding all projects pertaining to the fight against illegal migration.  Despite this, Belarus remained committed to a policy of good neighborliness, he emphasized, noting that his country had always been on the front line of the fight against trafficking in human beings, both nationally and internationally.

Warning that human rights has become “a real weapon against undesirable and disobedient countries” in the hands of shortsighted politicians, he stressed that attempts to impose democracy from outside often lead to chaos and instability.  Unilateral restrictive measures, which violate international law and inflict serious damage on international relations, have become another “favorite toy of Western States”.  He expressed his solidarity with other countries suffering from sanctions that undermine development of private initiatives, reduce educational opportunities and threaten food security.  All financial and economic sanctions should be outlawed as an instrument of political pressure.  In addition, some Member States reinterpret the work and practices of the General Assembly by promoting the voices of civil society at this high-level platform.  “This is categorically unacceptable,” he said, recalling the key principle of the United Nations work of “one State, one vote”.  Civil society representatives would drown the views of independent States and make it harder to achieve consensus.  Citing Martin Luther King, he urged the international community to “live together as brothers or perish together as fools”.