Baku comments on results of U.S. Helsinki Commission’s briefing

Azerbaijan, Baku, July 17 / Trend M. Aliyev / Organizing the briefings by the U.S. Helsinki Commission is a common practice, Head of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration's Social and Political Department Ali Hasanov said. He was commenting on a briefing on Azerbaijan held by the Commission on July 16. "According to the existing rules, briefings are of informal nature and such meetings are conducted by members of the secretariat, rather than a chairman or a co-chairman of the commission," he said. "Therefore, no committee member attended this briefing on Azerbaijan. Taking this into account, I think it is wrong to assess the event from the aspect of the U.S.-Azerbaijani relations and the U.S. attitude towards Azerbaijan." "The two countries have strategic partnership and they cooperate in different spheres," he added. "The sides demonstrate the will to further develop these relations." "As for this event, I would like to stress that the persons representing Azerbaijan's official circles at the briefing, have provided detailed information on the upcoming presidential elections, the activity carried out under the leadership of President Aliyev in the field of democratic state-building, human rights protection and other spheres," Hasanov said. "The attempts are made to exaggerate the significance of the event and to raise it to the level of congressional "hearings"," he added. "I assess this as certain internal political groups' attempt to self-promotion. They wanted this event to be held in the format of congressional hearings. They even tried for congressmen and senators, who are members of the committees and have recently visited Azerbaijan, to attend the event. But they failed. This is their defeat. This testifies to the U.S. superficial attitude towards this opposition." Hasanov also spoke about the issue of biased reports of various international organizations. "Some foreign organizations have a biased attitude towards Azerbaijan," he said. "I am sure that even if an exemplary democratic society is created in Azerbaijan, such organizations as Amnesty İnternational, Human Rights Watch, Freedom Hause, Reporters Without Borders will find an excuse to put Azerbaijan in a bad light." "Some reports concerning Azerbaijan are prepared on the basis of the order," he said. "We have every reason to suspect the Armenian lobby, and certain foreign anti-Azerbaijani circles. I think that it is easy to prove this. It is sufficient to pay attention to the "comparison" between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Amnesty İnternational's report. The report says that Armenia allegedly held the parliamentary elections in accordance with the new electoral legislation, which pays special attention to candidates' equal opportunities for the electoral resources and media. The diversity of the elections increased. Moreover, the report says that the peaceful and quite comprehensive elections in Armenia are in contrast with merciless dispersal of public meetings in Baku during the preparation for the Eurovision song contest, as well as imposing big fines against participants of the unsanctioned rallies. Ramil Safarov's case was exaggerated. They describe how "mercilessly" he killed an Armenian serviceman. One can continue stressing such incidents and comparisons. That is, the main purpose of the report is to compare "peaceful", "democratic", "developing", "protecting civil rights" Armenia with "monster" Azerbaijan and the formation of an adequate view of the international community." However, there was not a single word about the shooting of peaceful demonstrators by Sargsyan's regime in 2008, the arrest of opposition activists, injuring of one of the candidates in the presidential elections in 2013, another candidate's hunger strike, main opponents of the government who were forced to boycott the elections, significant violations during the elections, total electoral falsification and other similar cases. "How can one consider Amnesty International's report unbiassed?" he stressed. "I think that such reports mainly disgrace their authors. We have never taken these allegations seriously. We do not intend to take this seriously until the threatening rhetoric continues." Do you have any feedback? Contact our journalist at agency@trend.az