At a time of U.S. sanctions against Moscow for its meddling in Ukraine, the civil unrest over the police shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, has provided Russian politicians with munition to accuse their opponents of racism and evoke the U.S.' troubled past with the rights of African Americans.
In an interview with news agency ITAR-Tass published on Thursday, Igor Borisov, a member of the Kremlin's human rights council, called for an international peacekeeping mission of human rights observers "to prevent the unleashing in the U.S. of a full-scale genocide against its population."
Similarly, the State Duma's deputy speaker from the ruling United Russia party, Sergei Neverov, on Thursday called upon the UN and NATO to investigate the U.S. police's response to the clashes in Ferguson, Ekho Moskvy reported.
"Events in the state of Missouri have demonstrated that the U.S. has serious problems owing to racial discrimination," Neverov told state-run NTV channel on Thursday.
The politicians' remarks reflect a widespread sentiment in Russia that the U.S. has double standards on the rights of minorities.
"While urging other countries to guarantee freedom of speech and not to suppress anti-government protests, the U.S. authorities at home are none too soft on those actively expressing discontent over persistent inequalities," Konstantin Dolgov, the foreign ministry's commissioner for human rights, said earlier this week.
Dolgov added that the unrest in Ferguson "in many ways mirrors the racial cataclysms that had repeatedly taken place in the U.S. in the past."
But while state-run Russian media have rushed to echo the Kremlin's accusations of hypocrisy — with military analyst Igor Korotchenkol, a frequent guest on television channel RT, dubbing the Ferguson riots "the protests of progressive African Americans against the totalitarian regime in the U.S." — other news outlets have been less eager to point fingers.
Russia's Ekho Moskvy — a radio station and online news portal that has been following a thin line between criticizing the Kremlin and avoiding the fate of several opposition-minded media that have been closed down — added a remark at the bottom of its Thursday report covering State Duma lawmakers' remarks on the Ferguson crisis.
Referencing the court proceedings against those involved in a mass rally against the Kremlin on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square in 2012, the note read: "As a reminder, this week the capital's court has sentenced three defendants in a case about massive unrest on Bolotnaya Square to real prison terms."
See also:
Dolgov: U.S. Should Worry About Human Rights in Ferguson First