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Erkin Gadirli: They removed my name from list for fear that Armenians might object to my participation

16 September 2016 15:45 (UTC +04:00)

Baku – APA. Erkin Gadirli, a board member of the Republican Alternative Movement in Azerbaijan (ReAl), has explained the reason behind his name’s removal from the list of participants in the hearing held in the US Congress.

Gadirli wrote on his Facebook page that he was unaware of the hearings.

“A week before the meeting, they wrote me from Washington that there were going to be such a hearing and they asked me to participate in the event. I said I could not come; long distance, no enthusiasm, little money. They said, ‘No, problem. All the expenses can be met by the inviting side’,” Gadirli said, adding that he was invited to join over Skype because there was no way to get a visa as the U.S. Embassy in Baku was closed due to Eid al-Adha .

“To tell the truth, my reluctance to join the so-called hearing in the Congress stood to a more valid reason. If you remember, during the 2013 presidential election they had invited me from ReAL and Eldar Namazov from the National Council to the Congress’s Helsinki Commission. The invitation wrote ‘hearings,’ so we departed with the purpose of attending a hearing. The day before the event, the Helsinki Commission’s staff members invited me for supper; good people, wonderful atmosphere, comfortable place. Nevertheless, our talk did not go right at all. The Commission’s staff members apologized to me and said tomorrow’s event would be a briefing, not a hearing. That is, no congressman would come and we would be talking ourselves. I got so disappointed. I’d gone a long way and all of a sudden I was told we would not be heard,” he wrote.

Gadirli noted that he saw Azerbaijani MPs Samad Seyidov and Asim Mollazadeh as showed up at the event.

“This time I asked the friends who arranged for my visit, ‘Are you sure it’s a hearing? Or they’re going to hold a briefing in the end like before? I said I would not participate if there was going to be a briefing instead of a hearing. They convinced me that there was going to be a hearing. So, I decided to join it over Skype. They asked me for the text of my speech and said it had to be a minimum of 800 words (approximately a five-minute speech). How could I fit so many problems into 800 words? I wrote it anyway. It was more than 1,600 words. They said ‘No problem. Send it to us, so we can disseminate it, but you’ll have to fit your speech into no more than 800 words. I agreed.

The day before the hearing, they wrote me from Washington that my name has been removed from the list of participants. When I asked the reason, I was told some informed the congressmen about my status on Khojaly that I posted three years ago. Everything was clear to me,” wrote the ReAl board member.

Gadirli said that he wanted to learn who had exactly informed the congressmen about it [the status].

“I couldn’t get an answer. Those people were offended by me. They told that they trusted me; however, I didn’t justify their confidence. They did not want my explanation. I was told that for fear that Armenians or journalists (who attended the hearing) might object to my participation, and it might disrupt the event.”

Gadirli said he knows exactly that “someone informed the congressmen against him”: “At the last moment – the day before the hearing – my name was removed from the list of participants. However, everything was going well till that time. In this regard, I have a lot of assumptions, but there is no evidence to prove them.”

Gadirli posted that the US Embassy hasn’t been contacting him for more than two years.