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Azerbaijanâ€™s Presidential Administration comments on Human Rights Watch report

03 September 2013 10:12 (UTC +04:00)

Baku – APA. “Human Rights Watch is constantly trying to form a biased and negative opinion on the Republic of Azerbaijan. The report “Tightening the Screws: Azerbaijan’s Crackdown on Civil Society and Dissent” issued by this organization roughly distorts real facts and misguides the world community,” said head of Political Analysis and Information Provision Department of the Presidential Administration Elnur Aslanov while commenting on the recent report of Human Rights Watch on Azerbaijan, APA reports.

The PA official said that the report based on unreliable and sometimes anonymous sources uses selective approach and cites only to the views of pro-opposition organizations and individuals.

Aslanov noted that the international prestige of every human rights organization is closely connected with its financial transparency and donations it collects: “It is not accidental that compared to 2011, the budget of Human Rights Watch reduced by half in 2012, this is related with gradual decline and loss of confidence in the independent activity of this organization. Those who recognized Human Rights Watch as defender of human rights have massively refused to finance this organization seeing that it is working to the orders of various centers. The report does not mention even one of the recent achievements of Azerbaijan, this clearly demonstrates that the authors are fulfilling such orders.”

Aslanov said that Human Rights Watch calling itself international human rights organization, inspects pre-election situation only in Azerbaijan, but doesn’t make similar reports during the elections and other periods in Armenia, the country of the South Caucasus, where human rights are mostly violated and those who oppose the ruling regime are shot dead: “It seems Armenian Vartan Grigorian’s membership of the Board of Directors plays a crucial role that the organization has episodic approaches to Armenia, while regularly takes groundless and biased position against Azerbaijan and disseminates non-objective and slanderous reports about our country. The document distorts and falsifies the facts about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and says that Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict lasted only 7 years. However, the conflict is going on and the war is not over yet. Though ceasefire was declared in 1994, Armenian armed forces continuously violate ceasefire and fire on civilians along the frontline. 9-year-old Fariz Badalov and 13-year-old Aygun Shahmaliyeva were shot dead by Armenian snipers along the frontline just in the years not considered by the Human Rights Watch.

The department chief said claims on “Armenianphobia” in Azerbaijan are nonsense.

“But for our captives and hostages, there is no Azerbaijani in Armenia, while more than 30 000 people of Armenian origin are living in Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani state considers Nagorno Karabakh’s Armenian community as its citizens and the Azerbaijani society will continue coexisting with them during the post-conflict period. The Azerbaijani authorities reiterate that this kind of biased, slanderous reports made to the order can not undermine Azerbaijan’s positive image strengthening in the world,” he said.