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Foreign Minister of the G7 countries with Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London: "Very concerned"
Photo: Felix Zahn / photothek.net / imago images / photothek
The foreign ministers of the seven most important industrialized countries have ended their first personal meeting in two years with clear criticism of Russia and China.
On Wednesday evening in London you were "very concerned" about the "irresponsible and destabilizing attitude of Russia".
In a adopted declaration, they accuse the government in Moscow of "malicious activities" in order to undermine the democratic systems of other states.
The Beijing government urged ministers to respect human rights.
The G7 are concerned about the deteriorating human rights situation in Russia and "the systematic action taken against opposition voices, human rights defenders, independent civil society and the media."
You again criticize the imprisonment of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
With a view to China, the group of economically strong Western democracies sharply criticize the repression against the Muslim Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region and again calls for the United Nations to be granted access to the region so that they can get an idea of the situation . The situation in Hong Kong is also addressed in the declaration. "We call on China and the Hong Kong government to end the targeted fight against rights and freedoms as well as democratic values," it says.
The ministerial heads also called on Iran to release all foreign or binational citizens who were being held "arbitrarily".
Among other things, this targets the British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been detained in Iran since 2016, and whose treatment in prison was described by activists as "torture".
The foreign ministers threatened the military junta in Myanmar with new sanctions.
Fair distribution of corona vaccines
During the deliberations of the foreign ministers from Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and the USA, one of the big topics was the fight against the corona pandemic.
The participating countries pledged to support the Covax initiative financially.
This should help to ensure "a quick and fair distribution" of vaccination doses around the world.
However, the ministers did not make any concrete financial commitments.
Covax wants to achieve a fair worldwide distribution of corona vaccines.
The aim of the program is to distribute enough vaccine doses by the end of the year to vaccinate up to 27 percent of the population in the 92 poorest countries.
kim / dpa / AFP