Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry comments on the statement of U.S. Department of State regarding Azerbaijan

Baku, July 30, AZERTAC Hikmet Hajiyev, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has commented on the statement of the U.S. Department of State regarding Azerbaijan. Hajiyev said that the "deep concern" of the U.S. Department of State, that is turning a blind eye to a number of cases causing concern in the region, as well as flagrant violations of human rights like brutal beating and arrest of peaceful protesters, politicizing any particular criminal case, is another vivid example of double standards and aimed at interference in the internal affairs of Azerbaijan. "The rule of law has been fully provided in democratic Azerbaijan and no one is persecuted for his political activities and opinions. Such biased statements on any criminal case without the judgment of the court are nothing more than unwarranted interference in its course. Ironically, the "deep concern" of the U.S. State Department has never covered the mass violation of rights of more than one million Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced persons deprived of fundamental rights as a result of the Armenian aggression. The U.S. pretending to be a "global custodian" of human rights in the background of the police brutality and systematic racial discrimination that engulfed the whole country, long-term extrajudicial detention and tortures in Guantanamo prison, eavesdropping operations carried out across the country and even against its close allies at the global level by ignoring its obligations arising from the universal declaration on human rights, as well as its commitments undertaken within the framework of international organizations, including the OSCE, and in violation of other countries' sovereignty, the extrajudicial killings through drones and such a number of other problems only evokes irony", the MFA spokesman emphasized.