Azerbaijan Continues Rejecting What is Obvious

• 07.31.2015, 09:49
•  Region,  World

 No country has any right to interfere into the internal affairs of Azerbaijan… This is a sentence that can periodically been heard by the Azerbaijani authorities, whenever any country or institution "dares" to criticize Azerbaijan.  This time the reason for Azerbaijan’s anger was the statement of the US State Department in which the US called on Azerbaijan to respect the universal rights of its citizens, haqqin.az reports.

"We are deeply concerned about the restrictions imposed on peaceful civil society and the arrests of journalists and civil society activists. We urge the Government of Azerbaijan to respect the rights of its citizens and ensure their rights to freedom of expression," the statement added.

The reason for such a statement was the detention of the relatives of opposition journalists Ganimat Zahid and Emin Milli. In response to this statement the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that "in a democratic Azerbaijan the rule of law is fully ensured and no one is being persecuted for his political views and activities." Of course, there are a lot of arguments against this claim as it is not a secret how many political prisoners in Azerbaijan are. This phenomenon of arresting activists and journalists for their political views is so common in Azerbaijan that even its own society, living in such a close political system, has many times protested and demanded their release. The fact of having political prisoners have also been and still is being mentioned in the reports of different international institutions and organization.

Thus Azerbaijan rejects not only what is obvious, but also dares to blame the US for using "double standards." Maybe this is good and it will make the US be more attentive in its relations with Azerbaijan and understand that it is also "guilty" for Azerbaijan’s such behavior.

This, of course, refers not only to the US but to the whole international community. The more they "do not notice" what is going there and keep silence, the more Azerbaijan will take it for granted and will become furious even because of a small criticism and start blaming the whole world.