Azerbaijan’s Permanent Mission to OSCE issues statement

The Permanent Mission of Azerbaijan to the OSCE has issued a statement on the Special meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council held on August 19, protesting to the agenda item raised by the United States, the European Union, Canada and Norway on the situation of human rights in Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani Mission cannot comprehend timeliness and relevance of the current agenda item raised by the US Delegation at the Special Permanent Council meeting. We expected to hear some new substantiated arguments and facts supporting the interventions of the delegations of the US, EU, Canada and Norway. However, the comments we heard are pretty much the same and our delegation responded to them in previous interventions of the OSCE as well as in press-releases, said the statement.

The Azerbaijani Mission rejects the allegations made by the US, Canada, and Norway with respect to the situation with human rights in Azerbaijan and finds such statement as undermining the country’s bilateral relations with these countries, said the statement.

According to the statement, Azerbaijan condemns the attempts to deliberately politicize and misinterpret ongoing legal cases against some individuals in the country, calling on the US, the EU and its member states, EU officials and institutions concerned, Canada and Norway to respect the decisions of justice system in Azerbaijan and to refrain from interfering into ongoing legal cases. "We consider the references made in the statements to some anonymous international monitor’s observations in courts as seriously flawed and designed with a view to exert pressure on administration of justice”.

Every person in Azerbaijan is equal before the law and bears equal responsibility for his or her deeds, and being a human rights defender or a journalist does not grant immunity or discharge from liability before the law. Advocating otherwise would be tantamount to promoting lawlessness that is unacceptable for and in Azerbaijan, the statement noted.

It is of concern that the noble cause of protection of human rights is abused in an attempt to create a fifth column and to destabilize a society. It is equal to troubling to see commercialization of the human rights protection and turning it into a sort of business with huge amounts of money transferred to personal bank accounts without accountability. It is beyond comprehension that these countries who among others helped Azerbaijan to build an effective system to counter money laundering and other illicit financial transactions are now questioning the Government for taking measures to address suspicious financial flows and other illegal acts, including tax evasion, which is a serious crime not only in Azerbaijan. Therefore we reject such a biased approach, said the statement.

In conclusion, we call on the US, EU, Canada and Norway who demonstrate such an enthusiasm over the case of few individuals in our country to extend a similarly caring approach to the fate of a million of Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs and to their inherent right to return to their lands of origin and restore their right on property, the statement said. "Azerbaijan encourages these delegations to demonstrate a principled approach to the destiny of two Azerbaijani civilians Mr. Dilgam Askerov and Mr. Shahbaz Guliyev who were taken hostage in the occupied Kalbajar district of Azerbaijan, subjected to torture and inhuman treatment since July 2014, went through an illegitimate trial process and convicted to life imprisonment and 22 years of jail. Regretfully, the US, EU, Canada and Norway remain silent in Permanent Council when we repeatedly addressed this issue. For Azerbaijani society such a stance of these delegations is a clear demonstration of double standards.”