AZERBAIJAN – UTOPIAN RHETORIC, DYSTOPIAN REALITY
The Hill, DC
Feb 4 2015
By Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte
If one lived within the confines of the Azerbaijani president’s
official Twitter account, one might think Azerbaijan is situated
within Utopia.
“Azerbaijan is a country that successfully goes down the path of
democracy, freedom, independence, progress and development,” President
Aliyev declared on January 7, 2015.
ADVERTISEMENT If you follow his tweets, you will find these daily
exaggerations thrown around lightly. What appears to be a discrepancy
with reality in Aliyev’s universe-through-Twitter exclamations,
are the independent reports of rigged elections and human rights
violations against journalists, civil societies and activists. Spanning
decades, they recently appeared on the international radar, thanks to
Azerbaijan’s emergence on the world stage, financed by its healthy,
albeit declining, oil and gas production.
What Aliyev forgets to include in his Twitter monologues are
the recently raised concerns by U.S. Secretary of State Kerry of
Azerbaijan’s human rights abuses. Once these concerns were raised,
Azerbaijani authorities raided and closed Radio Free Europe – Radio
Liberty’s Baku bureau, interrogated its employees while denying them
access to legal representation. According to RFE/RL, the bureau, funded
by the U.S. government, was taken over by Azerbaijani prosecutor’s
office, which confiscated documents and equipment before sealing
off the premises. The criticism that triggered such a response
focused on treatment of journalists, specifically the imprisonment
of investigative journalists and rights activists Leyla Yunus, her
husband Arif, and Khadija Ismayilova.
In his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, David J. Kramer of Human
Rights and Democracy at the McCain Institute, called the raid “a direct
challenge to the U.S.,” and called for U.S. to “impose consequences
on” Aliyev’s “thuggish” regime. Kramer correctly pointed out that
some responded to the dictator’s capricious actions, as did the
Council of Europe’s human-rights chief, Nils Muiznieks, and several
U.N. envoys. The war of words erupted when the U.S.
Ambassador to OSCE, Daniel Baer, tweeted that the raid was a “behavior
of weak, insecure corrupt governments and leaders.” Words are not
enough.
“Why does the Aliyev regime think it can get away with its abuses?”
Kramer asks, before answering, “Because so far it has.”
With the unfolding of the tragic events in Paris, the Azerbaijani
crackdown is alarming to the observers. But this reality always
simmered under the glittery disguise of Baku’s downtown, with promises
of a progressive nation, eager to receive its investors.
Azerbaijan’s abuses have been swept under the rug not only with its
internal crackdowns on freedom, but also with its blatant disregard
to international law over the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) conflict.
Specifically, the 2014 downing of the NKR military helicopter did
not trigger any strong OSCE, or world, reactions. Three Armenian
crew members died performing a training flight over their territory,
shot down by Azerbaijan. This was the first such incident since a
ceasefire was agreed upon in 1994, yet nothing happened.
“Armenia does not want peace, while the Minsk Group, unfortunately
can’t achieve any result in this matter,” Aliyev tweets this January
Yet this Universe-through-Twitter logic does not jive with reality.
As far as NKR and Armenia are concerned, peace is the only thing that
is advantageous for the continued development of the two Armenian
nations. Since 1994 NKR enjoyed rebuilding of its nation, free of
Azerbaijani aggression. Why, then, would NKR disturb the peace it has
won, and the roads and buildings it has built in the last 21 years, by
agitating a war-mongering neighbor next door that threatens war daily?
It wouldn’t.
Aliyev is right that OSCE cannot achieve anything, but only if it
sits on the sidelines of hundreds of deliberate violations (from
the helicopter, to murder of Armenian civilians, to illegal border
infiltrations) with meek expressions of “concern.”
So it will continue. And every time Aliyev gets bored, expect a tweet
from him describing his fictitious Utopia.
“Armenia does not want peace,” he states, yet on the 25th anniversary
of Baku pogroms when innocent Armenian population of Azerbaijan was
killed, violated and exiled from their homes, one of his 43 tweets
that day declares: “Armenia is a powerless and poor country.”
It really is time for the Obama administration to enforce consequences
on Azerbaijan’s disregard for human rights and international agreements
by which it must abide.
Turcotte, the a uthor of “Nowhere, a Story of Exile,” is a lecturer
and a refugee from Baku, Azerbaijan.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/231605-azerbaijan-utopian-rhetoric-dystopian-reality