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THE HILL:TACKLING AZERBAIJAN'S CORRUPTION
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/280435-tackling-azerbaijans-corruption
By Harout Harry Semerdjian, Ph.D. candiate, University of Oxford, UK
- 01/31/13 04:00 PM ET
In his op-ed entitled "Armenia and Azerbaijan: Arriving at a fair
and honest discourse," Emil Agazade, while touching on issues only
peripheral to my original article and best suited to his interests,
passes all limits of journalistic ethics and crosses into the boundary
of hate and ignorance.
Instead of attempting to give Congress a counter-lesson on history
and geopolitics, I would highly suggest that Emil Agazade first help
put his own house in order. Transparency International consistently
ranks Azerbaijan among the most corrupt countries of the world, and
its president Ilham Aliyev was recently named the "world's most corrupt
leader" by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Journalists in the country continue to suffer from violence and
threats, and pro-democracy activists have been beaten and imprisoned
in recent years. The European Parliament has explicitly condemned
Azerbaijan for "increasing number of incidents of harassment, attacks
and violence against civil society and social network activists and
journalists in Azerbaijan."
This is also the very leadership of a country that makes heroes out
of axe-murderers such as Ramil Safarov, who was recently pardoned
despite having killed his fellow Armenian attendee with an axe
in a NATO-sponsored study program in Hungary. This is also the
same regime that embarked on a Taliban-style cultural genocide in
2005 against thousands of medieval Armenian religious monuments in
Jugha, Nackichevan, which has been well-documented by video footage,
photographs and advanced satellite imaging. International diplomats
have been repeatedly banned by Azerbaijani authorities from visiting
the region, including past and present U.S. Ambassadors to Azerbaijan,
Matthew Bryza and Richard Morningstar.
While the petro-dollars of the Aliyev regime fund lobbyists such as
Emil Agazade to monitor the global media and attempt to suppress
freedom of information, it would be much wiser for Azerbaijan's
leadership to spend the money at home, where over 40 percent of the
rural population live below the poverty line.
Semerdjian is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oxford.
Read more:
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/280435-tackling-azerbaijans-corruption#ixzz2Jdu9et57
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/280435-tackling-azerbaijans-corruption
By Harout Harry Semerdjian, Ph.D. candiate, University of Oxford, UK
- 01/31/13 04:00 PM ET
In his op-ed entitled "Armenia and Azerbaijan: Arriving at a fair
and honest discourse," Emil Agazade, while touching on issues only
peripheral to my original article and best suited to his interests,
passes all limits of journalistic ethics and crosses into the boundary
of hate and ignorance.
Instead of attempting to give Congress a counter-lesson on history
and geopolitics, I would highly suggest that Emil Agazade first help
put his own house in order. Transparency International consistently
ranks Azerbaijan among the most corrupt countries of the world, and
its president Ilham Aliyev was recently named the "world's most corrupt
leader" by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Journalists in the country continue to suffer from violence and
threats, and pro-democracy activists have been beaten and imprisoned
in recent years. The European Parliament has explicitly condemned
Azerbaijan for "increasing number of incidents of harassment, attacks
and violence against civil society and social network activists and
journalists in Azerbaijan."
This is also the very leadership of a country that makes heroes out
of axe-murderers such as Ramil Safarov, who was recently pardoned
despite having killed his fellow Armenian attendee with an axe
in a NATO-sponsored study program in Hungary. This is also the
same regime that embarked on a Taliban-style cultural genocide in
2005 against thousands of medieval Armenian religious monuments in
Jugha, Nackichevan, which has been well-documented by video footage,
photographs and advanced satellite imaging. International diplomats
have been repeatedly banned by Azerbaijani authorities from visiting
the region, including past and present U.S. Ambassadors to Azerbaijan,
Matthew Bryza and Richard Morningstar.
While the petro-dollars of the Aliyev regime fund lobbyists such as
Emil Agazade to monitor the global media and attempt to suppress
freedom of information, it would be much wiser for Azerbaijan's
leadership to spend the money at home, where over 40 percent of the
rural population live below the poverty line.
Semerdjian is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oxford.
Read more:
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/280435-tackling-azerbaijans-corruption#ixzz2Jdu9et57
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook