Council of Europe against Azerbaijan

• 06.08.2016, 13:50
•  Europe,  Region,  World

Recently two important developments took place in the Council of Europe. On June 4, the European Party of Liberals and Democrats Union (ALDE) adopted a resolution, "Promotion of Civil Society in Azerbaijan: an Appeal to European Institutions," by which they called to suspend the right of Azerbaijan to vote in PACE.  The resolution which condemned Aliyev's dictatorship also called to adopt sanctions against Azerbaijan.

In parallel another body of the Council of Europe, European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), on June 4, published a report on Azerbaijan, in which among other issues of concern in Azerbaijan, continued using hate speech against Armenians was emphasized. As an example the report referred to the Safarov’s case.

"In 2012 the authorities pardoned, released and promoted Ramil Safarov, who had been sentenced in Budapest to life imprisonment for the murder of an Armenian army officer, without taking into account the risk of cultivating a sense of impunity for the perpetrators of racist crime," it reads.

The developments seem to be of particular interest, if viewed from the following perspective: if we go back to the recent  PACE resolution on Karabakh (the Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water) and the details of its voting results, then it should be stated that majority of the very ALDE MPs voted for the report to become a resolution (18 of 25). What does it speak about?

Not to sound too optimistic we can at least hope that the Azerbaijan petrodollars have lost their effectiveness and nowadays it becomes harder for Azerbaijan to close the eyes of the international community. Second, it seems that four day war and the Azerbaijani aggression against the peaceful residents of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic made some changes in the attitude of the international community and they finally started to recognize that by adopting such provocative resolutions they will only encourage further aggression by Azerbaijan; the argument which was brought not once by the Armenian sides.

Those are the realities and the sooner the international community in general and separate MPs of the Council of Europe realize it, the better it will be for the very Azerbaijanis, Armenians and the international community in general.