Recently, commentators on social media were outraged by racist remarks made by well-known journalist Yulia Latynina and Liberal Party leader Mikhail Svetov during a live stream. The conversation amused participants when they realized that leading positions in international human rights organizations are apparently held not by «white people» but by immigrants from countries that Latynina, imitating Trump, called «shithole countries,» which can be loosely translated into Russian as «black holes.
Latynina: «…the last time I was shocked was when I saw who is currently running the Hague Tribunal. There is now a chief prosecutor who is a Muslim woman from Gambia (highlighted by us, — GI) who is trying to hold Americans accountable for the atrocities committed in Iraq… I especially like it when our people say: «The Hague will judge everything». Have you seen this Hague? Open Wikipedia, have a look.
Svetov: «The same situation exists in the UN Human Rights Council.
Latynina: «Yes, I think there is a Jordanian in charge of human rights at the UN…….Take a look at which shithole countries they all come from now». https://youtu.be/ZDUh—shehA?t=645
Well Then let’s find out who our two «white Europeans» decided to make fun of and to whom the expression «shithole countries» is more applicable today. First of all, if we look at Wikipedia, which Latynina advises us to do in order to «see this Hague», we will find out that the president of the Hague Tribunal today is not a «Muslim woman from Gambia», but a «Muslim man from Somalia» — Abdulqawi Yusuf. It is understandable that for our expert in international politics all Muslims are the same, but not to such an extent! Furthermore, Wikipedia will tell us that Judge Abdulqawi Yusuf is a doctor of international law who studied law at the University and Institute in Geneva and then in Florence, and in addition to his native Somali, he is fluent in English, French, Italian and Arabic. Indeed, Wikipedia gives us an idea of the list of scientific works published by this judge in different languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulqawi_Yusuf#Publications). And here’s what we can learn about the publications of Latynina herself from the same Wikipedia (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%AE%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D0%9B%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8B%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9). As they say, feel the difference…
Even more amusing is that our «white Europeans» decided to mock Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein (pictured below — in the middle), the head of the UN Human Rights Commission, whom they referred to as «some Jordanian». «Some Jordanian» is actually not just a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a prince of the Hashemite dynasty, one of the most influential dynasties in the Middle East, and the first in line to the symbolic but nonetheless Iraqi throne (like the Romanovs in our time), and, incidentally, the son of a Swede from the Swedish royal house of Vasa. Clearly, we are dealing with a representative of, as they say, the global elite, not the new financial elite, but the old aristocratic one. And here we have two representatives of Soviet education who call him «some Jordanian», by the way, about Jordan itself and the criteria for shithole countries. According to the criteria of Freedom House, Jordan today belongs to the category of «partly free» states, along with Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and even today’s Hungary, a member of the EU. So where is this «hole», and is it worth labeling countries with much more developed legal, political, and economic systems that are deeply integrated into the Western world as sitting in such a hole?