Domestic

Domestic

Ali Hasanov accuses opposition of anti-Azerbaijan activity

31 May 2012 10:12 (UTC +04:00)

Head of public policy department of the Presidential Administration Ali Hasanov also attended the conference.

Chairman of the Council of State Support to NGOs Azay Guliyev reminded that the Concept of State Support to NGOs in Azerbaijan was elaborated in 2007. This document revived the activity of non-governmental organizations in the country. Guliyev said they are working on several documents which will give additional support to NGOs.

Ali Hasanov said NGOs have same essence with the political parties in the first years of independence in Azerbaijan. â€œIn 1992-1998, the government and NGOs were seeing each other as a rival.â€ The law on grants adopted in 1998 promoted the activity of NGOs and the relations started to normalize in 1998-2002. â€œWe are honest before the NGOsâ€.

Hasanov noted that some NGOs â€“ Norwegian Human Rights House, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch see Azerbaijan as an African country. â€œThey are wrong. Azerbaijan is not an African country. Azerbaijani people established democratic state before the most of the European peoples did it. Azerbaijan was always distinguished among the worldâ€™s leading nations. Today some organizations try to denigrate us while themselves being not independent. Azerbaijani people are exposed to the aggression by Armenia for 20 years. There are refugees and IDPs. They donâ€™t write that this country has one million refugees, struggles transnational problems, pursues alternative policy in the South Caucasus and prevents interventions in state policy. But they write someone was expelled from his house, some partyâ€™s rights are violated. In which country, the press writes what it knows, criticizes the head of state and his family, the government officials? Two-three persons like Straesser having no authority adopt documents. Today European Union is in crisis and faces the problem of unemployment. Who will respond for them? CNN, BBC, Euronews report only one thing â€“ the countries have bad governments. Iran slanders calling us â€œgaysâ€, â€œhomosexualsâ€. The person who goes to mosque to pray shouldnâ€™t lie. Now they say â€œwe frightened Azerbaijan and they didnâ€™t hold gay-paradeâ€.

Hasanov also criticized the opposition and accused them of anti-Azerbaijan activity.

The conference participants issued a statement protesting the European Parliamentâ€™s resolution and other documents adopted by the international organizations on the eve of the Eurovision song contest.