Baku, Azerbaijan, June 25
Trend:
The mass protests in Armenia are the Armenian people’s revolt against the country’s criminal regime, the Azerbaijani president’s aide for public and political affairs, Ali Hasanov told reporters June 25 .
He made the remarks answering a question about the protests that started in Armenia on June 20.
On June 23, the Armenian police broke up a rally in the center of the country’s capital. The rally was held in protest against the increased electricity tariffs. The protests in the streets resulted in use of water cannons against people. Due to use of police force many people got injured and arrested, including the country’s journalists.
“The mass protests in Armenia are the Armenian people’s rebellion against the criminal and anti-people regime of Serzh Sargsyan, the rise of the social problems to the level of national disaster during that government’s rule, the corruption’s and bribery’s becoming a state policy, the anti-democratic governance methods, the strangling of the people’s voice of truth and their mass leaving the country,” said Hasanov.
Hasanov said the harsh and especially cruel dispersal of protests by the government forces is the visible indicator of the anti-democratic situation in Armenia.
“Hundreds of people were beaten, injured and subjected to violence,” said Hasanov. “Special technical means were used widely to disperse the protest.”
He underscored that even the journalists covering the rallies, as well as the human rights defenders, were subjected to the violence of the police and the special service agencies and they were detained.
“The Armenian government, afraid of the people’s anger, resorted to the cruelest means,” said the Azerbaijani president’s aide.
Hasanov said it is not surprising that the Western circles, which usually exaggerate some small incidents in Azerbaijan expressing their attitude towards them on the level of official structures, remain silent on this issue.
He added that the continuing silence on serious law violations, brutal treatment of citizens, media representatives and human rights defenders in Armenia demonstrated by the West, which expresses its attitude towards certain small incidents in Azerbaijan at the level of the US State Department, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the official bodies of certain European states, is worth paying attention to.
The US government, which, at the State Department level, criticizes the imprisonment of somebody who has committed a certain crime in Azerbaijan, expressed its position on the ongoing processes in Armenia through its embassy in this country, Hasanov said.
This attitude of the US to the ongoing processes in Armenia was nothing but an attempt to divert the attention of the international community from the essence of this issue, according to the top official.
On that day, some European Parliament members, who were criticizing Azerbaijan at the PACE plenary session, were behaving as if nothing happened in Armenia, he added.
Ali Hasanov said that the western media covered this issue on the surface only, while the international NGOs didn’t touch upon this issue at all.
On the day when the protesters were violently dispersed in Armenia, the Freedom House (the US-based NGO), which is notable for its biased position towards Azerbaijan, made a report nearly presenting Armenia as “an example of democracy”, Hasanov said.
All these facts show the double standards policy of the West, it can’t be called otherwise, when a defamation campaign is systematically organized against one country, while it is turned a blind eye to the protest crackdown and human rights violation in the neighboring country, according to Hasanov.
Trend