THE DYNASTIC REGIME OF ALIYEVS GETS ONE MORE KICK FROM EUROPE
ArmInfo
2009-12-26 13:50:00
Hardly had the underlings of the Aliyev dynastic regime stopped their
hysteria about Euronews’s program when Ilham Aliyev received an even
stronger kick from Europe – this time from the European Parliament. In
their Dec 17 resolution the European MPs expressed concern for the
worsening freedom of press situation in Azerbaijan.
Particularly, they condemned the practice of detention, prosecution
and conviction of opposition journalists and demanded that all arrested
journalists be set free immediately.
The regime reacted right away according to its best traditions:
"By adopting the latest resolution on Azerbaijan, the European
Parliament has once again confirmed that the West pursues double
standards policy towards our country," Spokesman of Azerbaijani Foreign
Ministry Elkhan Polukhov said in an interview to Trend News. This
statement inspired all the regime’s henchmen capable of stringing a
few words together into indignant protests against the "injustice"
of the European parliamentarians. The Milli Mejlis of "democratic"
Azerbaijan was the most eloquent, as always. Starting their appeal to
the European Parliament with dubious and risky "Azerbaijan continues
democratic state-building, respects human rights," the Azerbaijani
deputies continued with "like many countries that have passed the
way of democratic development Azerbaijan also has some problems"
and finished with traditional "the regrettable fact is that the
entire world community knows which country is the occupier and which
is under occupation. Despite this, Azerbaijan, as a state choosing
path of democratic development, has always given preference to the
settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict peacefully. Given all this,
we protest against the European Parliament statement criticizing the
human rights situation in Azerbaijan" and "we hope that taking into
account the interest of Azerbaijan in more strengthening relations
with Europe, the European Union will not allow such kind of statements
with regard to Azerbaijan in future."
However, the logic of the Azerbaijani MPs is just a poor second to
the analytical thinking of their leader, Speaker of Milli Mejlis Oqtay
Asadov, who went as far as saying that his European colleagues tried to
pressure Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue and were influenced
by Armenian Diaspora organizations when adopting the resolution.
Chairman of Milli Mejlis International Relations Committee Samed Seidov
urged the Azerbaijani MPs to work with both pro- and anti-Azerbaijani
forces so as to prevent similar resolutions in the future but, by
protesting, to continue developing relations with the Europeans so
the latter realize Azerbaijan’s significance for Europe.
"We should explain to them in their own language what Azerbaijan
means to Europe," Seidov said without specifying how to do this.
It should be noted that, yesterday, the ruler of Azerbaijan deigned
to respond to the resolution. Ilham Aliyev decreed to set free as
many as 89 prisoners but only one of them – by some miracle – was
an opposition journalist, a person imprisoned on charge of taking
a bribe. Among the others were three citizens of Afghanistan, two
Iranians, one citizen of Nigeria, one Russian, one Chinese and one
Macedonian. 1 journalist has been killed, 68 imprisoned and 274 beaten
during the presidency of Ilham Aliyev.