FREEDOM HOUSE AGAIN REGISTERS DEMOCRATIC PROGRESS IN ARMENIA AND REGRESSION IN AZERBAIJAN
20:34 18/06/2013 ” SOCIETY
While neighboring Azerbaijan aggressively stifled political opposition,
Georgia and Armenia conducted parliamentary elections under new
electoral laws that emphasized equal access to campaign resources and
media coverage, the Freedom House new report on “Nations in Transit
2013” reads.
Freedom House report analysed progress of democracy of 29 countries
in the central Europe and Eurasia. According to the document the
authoritarian countries among which was Azerbaijan, adoted new laws
limiting the freedom.
It says that, for the first time, the Armenian National Congress,
which had formerly denounced all government institutions, won seats in
Armenia’s National Assembly and began participating in parliamentary
politics.
“The democracy gap between Azerbaijan and its Caucasian neighbors
continued to grow in 2012. The peaceful and more inclusive elections
in Georgia and Armenia contrasted sharply with the brutal suppression
of public gatherings in the run-up to the Eurovision song contest in
Baku,” the Freedom House writes.
When Hungarian authorities made a surprising decision to
repatriate former Azerbaijani army officer Ramil Safarov, who had
been imprisoned for brutally murdering an Armenian officer while
training in Budapest in 2004, the government in Baku gave him a hero’s
welcome and immediately set him free, thereby halting any progress
in Azerbaijan’s negotiations with Armenia over the disputed territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Summing up, the organization notes, that in the sphere of civil
liberties and corruption, Azerbaijan has registered a regression
without achieving any progress in no area, while Armenia has provided
improvements in media freedom and has generally improved its democracy
along with the Czech Republic, Latvia, Georgia, Moldova and Kyrgyzstan.
Source: Panorama.am