THE AZERBAIJANI MASS MEDIA HAVE ONCE AGAIN LOST THEIR WAY …

Azat Artsakh Newspaper
December 25, 2009
NKR

The Azerbaijani mass media have once again lost their way in broad
daylight, trying to depict the Karabakh party in an unfavourable
light. During a day, the woman, who was killed on December 20, 2009
on the NKR and Azerbaijani armed forces’ contact-line first by an
"Armenian" serviceman, then, as it was found out, by an Azerbaijani
soldier, turned from an "Armenian woman" into an Azerbaijani one.

Moreover, a photo of a Georgian woman made in August 2008 during the
war in South Ossetia was attached to the information. The Azerbaijani
mass media have practiced forgeries in their anti-Armenian propaganda
for a long time. This was fixed not only by the Karabakh party. The
Moscow edition New Region notes that the Azerbaijani mass media have,
at least, three times used forgeries for the last three months,
applying photomaterials of various countries for "proving the facts
of the Armenian aggression". Besides the abovementioned forgery
of the Azerbaijani Agency Vesti.az related to the killed woman,
the edition notes as an example the distribution of a photo of a
Georgian soldier killed in August 2008 "to confirm" the Karabakh
party’s losses allegedly taken place as a result of the NKR Defense
Army units’ attacking the Azerbaijani positions. In fact, everything
was exactly the contrary. Besides, the Russian edition unmasked Trend
Azerbaijani information agency, which had informed of the completion
of a documentary about the Karabakh conflict, attaching a photo
of alleged "victims of the Armenian aggression", which, in fact,
turned out to be a photo of deceased citizens of Kosovo taken from
a Canadian francophone website. This forgery related to the tragic
events in Khojaly and placed at some Azerbaijani websites, including
the one of the basic anti-Armenian misinformation center of the Heydar
Aliyev Fund (), the leader of which is the Azerbaijani
President’s wife, was earlier diclosed by the NKR Foreign Ministry.

We have to state once more that against the background of the
proceeding meetings of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents and
the optimistic statements of the international mediators on certain
progress in the Karabakh conflict settlement process, official Baku
and its improvised mass media continue their aggressive information
war against the RA and NKR, using all the means for introducing the
Armenian parties as the misdeeds’ actors and for injecting a new
portion of Armenian-hatred poison into the international community’s
and their own people’s mind. Unfortunately, this destructive policy of
official Baku isn’t properly assessed by corresponding international
structures, which is fraught with nullifying the multiyear peacemaking
efforts. "Democratic" Azerbaijan "integrating" into the West and its
"independent" mass media should finally realize that freedom of speech
is not freedom of misinformation. We hope that in the coming year,
the international community will take the counterproductive actions
of the Azerbaijani authorities more seriously.