Joint statement to OSCE on 77th anniversary of Victory in WWII
Permanent representatives of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the OSCE have made a statement on the occasion of the 77th anniversary of Victory in World War II – as informed by the Belarusian Foreign Ministry’s press service
"This year the world is celebrating the 77th anniversary of Victory in World War II which was a horrible test that befell humanity in the 20th century," the statement reads. “This page of our common history was victoriously turned over thanks to an unprecedented feat of the peoples who selflessly fought against the ideology of enmity, enslavement and misanthropy, who achieved the long-awaited Great Victory. The memory of those years full of suffering, severe trials and tragic events of truly unimaginable scales echoes in eternity. Our peoples passed through hardship and sorrow, and at the same time heroic courage and perseverance, courage, self-sacrifice and love, faith in justice and the rightness of their cause. With the deepest gratitude, we bow our heads before their immortal feat. Our duty as contemporaries is to convey to posterity the true picture of those events and to protect the historical truth about WWII.”
In this regard, the permanent representatives of a number of OSCE states believe the attempts to falsify history and revise the results of the war are absolutely unacceptable. They strongly condemn the destruction and desecration of monuments to soldier-liberators and other acts of vandalism against memorial and burial sites of soldiers and officers who died for the liberation of Europe and Asia from Nazism and fascism.
"There is no justification for attempts to rehabilitate and glorify Nazi criminals and their accomplices, to deny that they committed crimes against humanity and war crimes during World War II – just as the decisions of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg do not have a statute of limitations. In this regard, we welcome the UN General Assembly’s resolution adopted on December 16th, 2021 on combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The fact that the overwhelming majority of states on the planet vote for this resolution year after year testifies to a global desire to prevent the repetition of the mistakes of the past. We consider this as a unifying agenda for a creative future," the statement reads.
The permanent representatives of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the OSCE urge the international community to cherish the memory of the fighters against Nazism during WWII. In addition, they share their conviction that defeated Nazism should never raise its head either on the Eurasian continent or anywhere in the world.
