AZERI TOLERANCE DOES NOT APPLY TO ARMENIANS

PanARMENIAN.Net
06.10.2007 GMT+04:00

Continuous pursuits and seeing the image of enemy in Armenians will
hardly help Azerbaijan to walk towards the progress and development
on its way to either the West or the East.

Lately Azerbaijan has started to speak about tolerance and respect
towards other nations, and naturally about democracy building more
frequently than before. What is said by the Azeri political figures and
journalists concerning the tolerance and "openness of the Azeri people"
applies to everyone but Armenians, because the flow of anti-Armenian
hysteria imposed on the reader and given publicity to from different
international organizations has become fiercer than ever.

Most likely, having concluded all the arguments, Baku has decided to
resort to what is most adequately accepted by the World Community.

According to the Azeri Milli Mejlis deputy chairman Valeh Aleskerov,
no discrimination on national, religious and ethnic basis has ever
existed in Azerbaijan. "Azerbaijan has always been tolerant to
different nations, religions and ethnic nations. This is applicable
for the present as well," said Aleskerov. The announcement sounds
strange even for today. Still in the Soviet Azerbaijan all the nations
except for the Azerbaijani were discriminated; they couldn’t have a
good job, they were forced to change their surnames and write letters
against their own nation. This pressure became even stronger at 80’s
of the last century in particular, when it became clear that USSR
didn’t have long to go. The truth is though that the Russians and
the Jews had nothing to fear, for Moscow stood for the Russians,
and the Jewish Diaspora together with big moneys stood for the Jews.

Yet no one stood for the Armenians and other smaller nations and so
they could easily be taunted. As a result there are no Armenians in
Azerbaijan, those few ones who still remain there are Azerbaijani
by passport.

However Baku has forgotten that in 1988 mass killings of the Armenian
people took place in Azerbaijan. On February 27 – 28 only in Sumgait
dozens of Armenians were killed in three days, the exact number of
victims is unknown, though according to official sources there were
32 of them. About 14.000 Armenians from Sumgait had to run away from
the city. The events of Sumgait were the answer to the decision of the
autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh from February 20, 1988 "about
the petition submitted to the Supreme Council of Azerbaijani SSR and
Armenian SSR about passing the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh
from the Azerbaijani SSR to the Armenian SSR." After Sumgait the
mass killings of the Armenian people took place in Kirovabad, in the
nearest Armenian villages and Baku.

The last Armenians left Baku in January 1990. However after mass
killings they started to ascribe someone else’s culture. Even the
radio channel Day.az started to launch its programs with the song
"Songs of the First Love" by Arno Babajanyan, thinking that if Rashid
Beibutov sang this song (who by the way is Armenian by his origins),
it is an Azerbaijani song.

In fact, a generation was brought up in Azerbaijan, which was taught
to hate the Armenian Nation from the very start.

Continuous pursuits and seeing the image of enemy in Armenians will
hardly help Azerbaijan to walk towards the progress and development
on its way to either the West or the East. Because of this kind of
interpretation of "tolerance" various Islamic groupings rise one after
another. The most important thing is to find the enemy and only after
that to speak nice words from the European or American platforms. The
Movement of Azerbaijani Intellectuals and the "Azeri" public community
organized a "round table" discussion on the subject "Let’s protect
our morals". The representatives of intellectuals, political, public
and religious organizations have been invited to participate in the
discussion, however nothing particular was achieved. Almost each
speaker thought necessary to criticize the USA and Israel, which, on
their opinion, implant immorality in Azerbaijan. Opening the enterprise
the Chairman of the Movement of Azerbaijani Intellectuals mentioned
that immorality became a very serious problem for the country. "Though
everybody says, that Karabakh is the most serious problem Azerbaijan
has for the present, I personally think that the main reason for
losing this region was our immorality," he said. According to the
leader of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan (IPA) Movsum Samadov,
the Jews have established an aggressive Zionistic Republic, which
poses danger to Islam and Islamic States. Devoting some minutes to the
history of Palestine, the leader of the party pointed out that the USA
a d Israel stand behind the back of those who propagate bad morals in
Azerbaijan. "The international Zionism keeps the Azerbaijani Television
under control," said the former IPA leader Nuriev. He believes that
all the intellectuals should stand up for the protection of Islam.

And at last it is always easier to control the "dark"
masses. Unfortunately the ignorance of the population is put on stake,
which was very well described by Kultura.az; "In the genetic memory
of the Azeri people there is no such understanding as "book". We have
never had a thing for reading and those few people who had love for
reading were considered absolutely "out of mind".