Respected Alexey Konstantinovich,

Respected deputies and members of the hearings,

Sergey A. Ryabkov has said in detail on the relevance of today's hearings. In spite of traditional Washington's desire to play a global leadership role in the protection of human rights and democratic values, the situation in this field in the United States remains very unfavorable. The Report on the Human Rights Situation in the United States prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia and presented to your attention evidences about it.

This document based on the verified data from reputable international and national sources contains the extensive factual information about the numerous problems including systemic problems, with which American society in the field of human rights is facing.

Among the most critical challenges standing in front of the United States are growing social inequality, discrimination on racial, ethnic and religious features, the practice of indefinite detention without charges, justice bias, prisons operating outside the law, torture using, interference of government agencies in the judicial process , problems in the penitentiary system, violation of freedom of speech, Internet censorship, in fact legalized corruption, restriction of electoral rights of citizens, intolerance based on race and ethnicity features, the violation of children's rights, the extraterritorial application of United States law leading to human rights violations in other countries, kidnapping, spying on dissidents, the disproportionate use of force against peaceful demonstrators, the use of the death penalty in relation to the minors and the mentally ill.

I want to focus on some subjects in more detail.

As it was earlier noted, the United States is not fully involved in a number of basic international agreements on human rights providing monitoring mechanisms. The Report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia includes the extensive list of documents, to which the United States should join. Furthermore, even assuming international obligations in the human rights sphere, Washington often limits their execution using special excuses. It is unacceptable from the point of view of the international concept universality of human rights.

There is the dangerous tendency of strengthening of racist and xenophobic attitudes in the United States. The U.S. law enforcement records a steady increase in the number of extremist groups and crimes motivated by racial, religious and national hatred.

The staff of the U.S. law enforcement agencies is regularly implicated in criminal activity. Thus, the estimations of the U.S. NGOs show that roughly one of a hundred police officers is involved in the criminal abuse. Reports on sexual harassment, indecent assault, rape by the police also in relation of minors became familiar. There were cases, where police misconducts were fatal. Only about 30 percent of the police is eventually condemned for their actions. There are numerous complaints on excessive use of force by police from participants of protest movements against social inequality.

Unfavorable situation exists in migration sphere. Each year in the United States around 400 thousand migrants and victims of trafficking go to the prison. Currently, 4.5 million of American children, at least, have the one of parents, who is on an irregular situation in the United States. There are cases of coercion of the migrants to prolonged work - about 16-24 hours a day. In addition, they become the victims of sexual violence.

One of the problem areas is the ensuring of social rights of the U.S. citizens. The country has 12.8 million unemployed, 40 million people having no health insurance, 14.5 percent of families are malnourished. Attention is drawn to the extremely low level of life among the indigenous population; there are clear signs of economic segregation. Despite the declarative statements among the developed world, the United States has one of the weakest systems of security of worker's rights including the activities of trade unions and collective bargaining.

Human rights activists and legal experts have been arguing about significant flaws in the American electoral system long time ago. Thus, the Electoral College suggests that the voters of some states have more weight than the voices of people in other states. The most «optimistic» calculations show that about 6 million Americans have no right to vote due to the presence of the criminal record. For example, among people, who are serving time in prison, the right to vote is restricted to those contained in the two states - Maine and Vermont. However, thirty states deny in the right to vote the conditionally convicted, and the released on parole can't vote in thirty five states. Those, who fully served their sentences, have no voting rights in eleven states. Thus, more than 7 percent of the adult population is not allowed for the elections in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia.

In the upcoming presidential election 25 percent of Americans will vote with the use of electronic device to read the votes. In more than half of the cases the voters will not know, how exactly the machine is recorded their vote. In addition, according to most experts, electronic devices used in United States are not adequately protected from external manipulation.

Negative tendencies have long been observed in the area of the ensuring of ​​media freedom. Authoritative international organizations dealing with this issue, fixed in 2012 that the situation has deteriorated further. In particular, the attention is paid to unreasonably strict measures taken by the U.S. police against journalists covering protest demonstrations, which are objectionable for the U.S. administration. American journalistic community concerned about the continued tightening of legislation in the media field and the denial of their rights. Still there are cases, when in the United States journalists are losing their jobs because of the «politically incorrect» statements.

Despite the high-profile performances for Internet freedom and against censorship of web content, the U.S. authorities are putting pressure on Internet companies. In the period from July to December 2011 the double amount of the requests with the requirement to remove the content from any sites were delivered to the company «Google» from the U.S. government agencies as compared with the same period in 2010. Number of emails, which were scanned by the U.S. secret services, had been increased by 3 thousand percent in the period from 2004 to 2007.

The current U.S. law essentially allows the intelligence community to carry out a total censorship of all electronic communications of foreigners and Americans without court approval. In 2011, U.S. law enforcement made ​​more than 1.3 million requests for the disclosure of the phone calls of mobile subscribers. Right of foreign nationals is vulnerable, so they may be the subject of electronic surveillance, even when there is no reason to believe that they were involved in criminal activity. There is the serious concern over the growing exponentially FBI database with the DNA samples.

The situation with the death penalty in the United States looks depressing. It still permitted and used in 33 states. More than three thousand prisoners including 62 women are waiting the execution of the death sentence handed down to them. 22 minors were executed in the United States from 1976 to 2005. According to American human rights activists, from 5 to 10 percent of those, who were sentenced to the death sentence in the United States, suffer from serious mental disorders. During the imposition of death sentence signs of racial discrimination are fixed.

The United States remains the country with the largest prison population in the world – there are more than 2 million people in the prison. More than 60 percent of American prisoners are the representatives of racial and ethnic minorities. Number of persons convicted for life is steadily growing. Only in 2008 it was 140.6 thousand people. Moreover, 2.5 thousand from 7 thousand minors, which were sentenced to life imprisonment, are denied the right to the pardon.

In some states, one of 20 prisoners is held in extreme isolation - in solitary confinements. Many prisons do not meet even the minimum standards of detention of convicts. Bullying including sexual assault by prison staff on inmates is regular and massive (up to 2 million affected since 2003 to present).

Priority attention, of course, is paid to the violations of rights of Russian citizens in the United States including Russian citizens Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko, who are in U.S. prisons. The guilty verdicts for them are «sewn with white threads», biased and politically motivated. Thus our citizens were condemned not for the concrete actions, but only for evil intention from the point of view of the American «justice». We recall that the successor company of notorious security company «Blackwater» officially recognized the illegal supply of weapons to Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and yet, somehow remains outside the prosecution.

We extend to seek the return of Viktor A. Bout and Konstantin V. Yaroshenko at home by all possible political and diplomatic and legal means. We are keen to use the existing international legal tools for this and rely on an adequate reaction from the side of our American colleagues.

We presume that Washington will take responsibility for the current U.S.-Russian agreements, such as, for example, the Consular Convention of 1964, where algorithms for solving of various problem situations were clearly defined.

Another Russian citizen Yuri Mihel, who was sentenced in 2007 to the death, had been sitting for many years in solitary confinement without windows. He is not allowed the walking and chatting with other prisoners. We will seek from the United States the adequate abidance of the legitimate rights and interests of Russian citizens in detention, the strict adherence of the United States to its international obligations.

There is the sad consequences of the United States democracy activities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to the reports, by August of 2012 the conflict in Iraq has taken the lives of up to 117 thousand civilians, of which about 15 thousand were killed by the forces of international coalition led by the United States (often as a result of air strikes and the use of unmanned vehicles). About 17 thousand civilians were killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of «Operation Enduring Freedom». There is the continuing of the practice of destruction (according to human rights activists - extrajudicial executions) of people suspected in terrorist activity with the use of unmanned aircrafts. 900 civilians (including 175 children), 150 civilians (one fifth of them is children) in Yemen, around 60 civilians in Somalia were killed as the result of such «targeted» strikes in Pakistan. There are regular cases of jeering and inhumane attitude to people by the U.S. military, the shooting of pregnant women and children, the mutilation and dismemberment of corpses. Characteristically, the perpetrators are brought to justice only in the most notorious cases.

The problem of secret CIA prisons, which were on the territory of Poland, Afghanistan, Iraq, Thailand, Morocco, Djibouti, Romania and Lithuania, has not solved yet. Their prisoners were abducted. Within prisons torture techniques were widely used. So the U.S. government is still hiding those responsible for these crimes, and blocking the lawsuits of special prison inmates.

Special prison Guantanamo still works, despite numerous appeals of human rights activists. It contains dozens of prisoners, and most of them over the years have been detained in violation of international law - indefinitely and without charge. «Evidences» of prisoner guilt presented by the U.S. government believe to be accurate, even if they are based on hearsay and circumstantial evidences. The legislative acts recently adopted in the United States indicate a reluctance of the U.S. administration to solve this problem.

Particular concerns are caused by the situation with the ensuring of the rights of children in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of children in the United States are abused often with fatal consequences. Corporal punishment is allowed by law in 19 states. There are learning centers, where children are «treated» and «educated» by electrocution, food deprivation and forced inhalation of ammonia spirit.

As it noted by Pavel A. Astahov and Sergey A. Ryabkov, the acute problem of violence against adopted children from Russia remains. Passive position of the profile U.S. agencies causes the extreme surprise. Everybody knows on egregious lawlessness cases, when the killers of our children were released in the courtroom.

New information about abuse of Russian children adopted in the United States appears regularly. So, Maxim Babaev was subjected to violence in the American family in Florida, and a three-year Denis from the Voronezh region was thrown by the foster mother in Massachusetts. In the case of Maxim his grief-adopters were arrested last year in Brevard County (Florida State) on suspicion of boy abusing, but the court had not found them guilty, but also they had recently closed the case.

In this case, we focus on media reports that the court of Texas town Dallas sentenced local woman Elizabeth Escalona to 99 years in prison for abuse of her own daughter, because of which the girl was in intensive care. This verdict shows that the U.S. justice can exercise maximum severity in cases of abuse against minors. At least, when it relates to American children. Against this background, there is the inexplicable indulgence that American courts show to the adoptive parents of Russian children by giving them an extremely lenient sentence, which is clearly not the gravity of the offense.

We believe that justice should include no double standards. We expect that the U.S. court system will not divide the children into «our» and «their» severely punishing for any attempt on the life and health of young Russians.

American colleagues tell us that the situation with the adoption of Russian children is «generally favorable» and the problems are rare, they say. Such approach to this issue is unacceptable. Even a single case is too many.

We presume that the current U.S.-Russian agreements, in particular, the Agreement on Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, which are coming into force, provide the necessary tools in order to avoid similar incidents. It is important that the U.S. authorities will ensure full and complete compliance with the Agreement in order to effectively guarantee the rights and interests of adopted Russian children. We hope that the U.S. Department of State will increase its efforts to implement this document.

In addition to security and development, human rights are the one of the main pillars of the modern world order. The Russian Federation has consistently adhered to principles such as equal dialogue, rejection of «double standards», and equal attention to all categories of human rights, the improving of understanding among civilizations, cultures and religions on the basis of common human rights values taking into account the unique national and regional features.

We remark that attempts to divide states into «bad» and «good», «disciples» and «examiners» are dangerous and pulled us back into the development. We are not going to do this. We expect that partners are ready to implement sober unbiased analysis of the state of affairs, the recognition of existing shortcomings and, most importantly, focus on cooperation on behalf of real solution searching and outputs.

The report prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia is not a means to criticize the sake of criticism. We reaffirm our commitment to strengthen the relationship of honest and open collaboration. So we are ready to organize work guided by the rule of law, equality and mutual respect.

And the last. The U.S. officials sometimes tell us that they recognize the human rights problems in the United States. To recognize is not bad. But the main thing is to take concrete steps to improve the situation and develop constructive cooperation with other countries parting with ideologically flawed tradition of mentoring.

Thank you for the attention.

October 23, 2012