[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
113th Congress Printed for the use of the
1st Session Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
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TROUBLED PARTNER: GROWING AUTHORITARIANISM IN
AZERBAIJAN
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
JULY 16, 2013
Briefing of the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
______________________________________________________________________
Washington: 2015
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
234 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-1901
[email protected]
http://www.csce.gov
Legislative Branch Commissioners
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SENATE HOUSE
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland, CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey,
Chairman Co-Chairman
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island JOSEPH PITTS, Pennsylvania
TOM UDALL, New Mexico ROBERT ADERHOLT, Alabama
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut MICHAEL BURGESS, Texas
ROGER WICKER, Mississippi ALCEE HASTINGS, Florida
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER,
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas New York
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
(ii)
* * * * *
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
The Helsinki process, formally titled the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe, traces its origin to the signing of the Helsinki
Final Act in Finland on August 1, 1975, by the leaders of 33 European
countries, the United States and Canada. As of January 1, 1995, the
Helsinki process was renamed the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The membership of the OSCE has expanded
to 56 partici- pating States, reflecting the breakup of the Soviet
Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
The OSCE Secretariat is in Vienna, Austria, where weekly meetings of
the participating States' permanent representatives are held. In
addition, specialized seminars and meetings are convened in various
locations. Periodic consultations are held among Senior Officials,
Ministers and Heads of State or Government.
Although the OSCE continues to engage in standard setting in the fields
of military security, economic and environmental cooperation, and human
rights and humanitarian concerns, the Organization is primarily focused
on initiatives designed to prevent, manage and resolve conflict within
and among the participating States. The Organization deploys numerous
missions and field activities located in Southeastern and Eastern
Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The website of the OSCE is:
.
* * * * *
ABOUT THE COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the
Helsinki Commission, is a U.S. Government agency created in 1976 to
monitor and encourage compliance by the participating States with their
OSCE commitments, with a particular emphasis on human rights.
The Commission consists of nine members from the United States Senate,
nine members from the House of Representatives, and one member each
from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce. The positions of
Chair and Co-Chair rotate between the Senate and House every two years,
when a new Congress convenes. A professional staff assists the
Commissioners in their work.
In fulfilling its mandate, the Commission gathers and disseminates
relevant information to the U.S. Congress and the public by convening
hearings, issuing reports that
reflect the views of Members of the Commission and/or its staff, and
providing details about the activities of the Helsinki process and
developments in OSCE participating States.
The Commission also contributes to the formulation and execution of
U.S. policy regarding the OSCE, including through Member and staff
participation on U.S. Delega-
tions to OSCE meetings. Members of the Commission have regular contact
with
parliamentarians, government officials, representatives of non-
governmental organiza-
tions, and private individuals from participating States. The website
of the Commission
is: .
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TROUBLED PARTNER: GROWING AUTHORITARIANISM IN AZERBAIJAN
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July 16, 2013
WITNESSES
Page
Thomas Melia, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Democracy, U.S. Department
of State...............................................................
3
H.E. Elin Suleymanov. Ambassador, Republic of Azerbaijan...............
6
Eldar Namazov, Leader of the ``EL'' Movement, National Council of
Democratic Forces in Azerbaijan........................................
9
Samad Seyidov, Dsc, MP.................................................
11
Erkin Gadirli, Chairman of the Assembly, Republican Alternative (ReAl).
13
Mariam Lanskoy, Director, Russia and Eurasia, National Endowment for
Democracy..............................................................
15
PARTICIPANTS
Shelly Han, Senior Advisor, Commission on Security and Cooperation in
Europe.................................................................
1
Paul Carter, Senior State Department Adviser, Commission on Security
and Cooperation in Europe..............................................
1
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TROUBLED PARTNER: GROWING AUTHORITARIANISM IN AZERBAIJAN
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July 16, 2013
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
Washington, DC
The briefing was held from 2:01 to 4:19 p.m. EDT in Capitol Visitor
Center, Senate Room 201-00, Washington D.C., Shelly Han, Senior
Adviser, CSCE, presiding.
Ms. Han. Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome you to a briefing of
the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe on the human
rights situation in Azerbaijan. We're very pleased to have an
illustrious and large panel to discuss this issue.
Both Azerbaijan and the United States are participating states in
the OSCE. I'm getting some feedback. As such have agreed to the
principle that comprehensive security and stability requires not only
physical security and economic development but respect for human rights
as well.
We have six speakers today. I'd like to remind them to keep their
statements succinct as we want to have time, after all the speakers
have finished, for questions. We will invite the audience to ask
questions as well. And we have distributed bios for each of the
speakers. I'll refer you to those instead of reading them out loud
before each speaker.
Before we start with our witnesses, I'd like to turn to the
commission's senior State Department adviser, Dr. Paul Carter, who's
going to provide a few remarks to help frame our discussion for today.
Paul.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Shelly, for the introduction. As Shelly
mentioned, I would like to take just a few minutes to provide some
context and frame today's discussion. I note at the outset that my
remarks are not an official statement of State Department policy, but
are offered instead in my capacity as senior adviser to the Helsinki
Commission.
The United States is a friend of Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani
people. We regard the government of Azerbaijan as a partner with whom
we share many interests and cooperate on many issues. Azerbaijan is
located in the strategically important Caucuses region, borders Russia
and Iran, and is a key gateway along the new Silk Road to Central Asia
and Afghanistan.
Azerbaijan established its economic independence soon after the
collapse of the Soviet Union and now plays an important role in efforts
to supply Europe with alternative sources of energy.
The government has supplied contingents of troops to work with us
in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The country is a significant transit
corridor for the United States to Afghanistan.
The United States has worked closely with Azerbaijan, as well as
Armenia, through the OSCE Minsk Group to find a positive, forward-
looking solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. The government of
Azerbaijan has taken a positive approach to significant international
issues, including maintaining good relations with Israel and respecting
sanctions against Iran.
These common interests and approaches have fostered good relations
between the United States and the government of Azerbaijan and have
received much attention in Washington and Baku.
But we are not here today to discuss energy, regional security or
Nagorno-Karabakh. Our purpose today is to discuss a set of issues that
has received less attention but is no less significant. These issues
concern the many reports of the Azerbaijani government's decline in
respect for democratic values and growing authoritarianism.
Reported trends include: intimidation, arrests and use of force
against journalists and human rights activists; tough new NGO
registration requirements; legal restrictions on the Internet,
including criminalizing online liable and abuse; restrictions on
freedom of assembly, forceful dispersion of unsanctioned protests, and
detention of demonstrators; unfair administration of justice, including
arbitrary arrests and detention; politically motivated imprisonment,
lack of due process, lengthy pre-trial detention and executive
interference in the judiciary; the jailing of religious believers; the
closing, in April, of the Free Thought University; and, since April
28th, the jamming of Radio Liberty-Radio Free Europe broadcasts.
Azerbaijan will hold a presidential election in October of this
year. The OSCE election observation mission's reports on previous
elections in Azerbaijan found that those elections failed to meet OSCE
and other international standards in significant ways.
We are concerned, given the current apparent decline in respect for
democratic values in Azerbaijan, that the prospects for a free and fair
presidential election have not improved and, indeed, may have
significantly declined. In this regard, I note as well that the
government of Azerbaijan still has not issued an invitation to the OSCE
to send long and short-term observers to the October election.
We have a distinguished panel of Azerbaijani and American
officials, politicians and experts to provide more information on these
issues and help us to understand their significance.
While some of our panelists currently are active on the Azerbaijan
political scene, I would like to stress that the Helsinki Commission
does not take sides in the upcoming presidential election. Our only
interest is in supporting a free and fair campaign and election as well
as a greater respect for human rights and democratic values.
With that, I would like to return the floor to Shelly, who will
introduce our first witness.
Ms. Han. Thanks, Paul. Now, I'd like to turn to Thomas Melia, who's
the deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights and Labor.
You have the floor.
Mr. Melia. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Han and Dr. Carter and all of
the commission members and staff for inviting me here to brief about
the situation in Azerbaijan and its implications for the October
presidential election.
Azerbaijan is, as Dr. Carter summarized so well, an important
partner for the United States. It plays a significant role in advancing
energy security for our friends and allies, and provides vital support
as a transportation hub for the international security mission in
Afghanistan.
Thus, it is timely and important for us to take a sober look at
recent Azerbaijani government actions, which raise concerns in advance
of the October presidential election, and about democratic and civil
society development more broadly.
As a friend of Azerbaijan, the United States supports the country's
long-term stability in a tough neighborhood. In this connection, I want
to share some of the concerns that we in Washington and our colleagues
at our embassy in Baku have discussed with senior Azerbaijani
government officials in recent months.
We have seen some positive efforts by the government in certain
important areas affecting human rights situation, such as in combating
human trafficking and battling against domestic violence, as well as an
impressive new ASAN, administration services center, in Baku that's
intended to decrease petty corruption.
Unfortunately, the political environment for human rights and
fundamental freedoms more broadly has worsened since at least last
November, when the Milli Mejlis passed amendments significantly
increasing fines on participants and organizers of unauthorized
protests.
Then, this year alone, restrictive actions have included an
increase in the number of detained peaceful democracy activists, use of
water cannons to disperse a peaceful protest in Baku, legislation
further restricting NGO financing, criminal code amendments that extend
penalties for defamation and insults to online content, and the closure
of the facility of the Free Thought University, a non-partisan forum
established by young activists to develop critical analytical skills
and independent thinking, which the U.S. government has been proud to
support in its formative months and for the first couple of years. And
there's been pressure on independent defense lawyers, resulting in a
decreasing number of such lawyers prepared to defend individuals
charged in sensitive political cases.
U.S. officials consistently highlight the importance of greater
respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms with Azerbaijani
government officials at all levels in Baku and Washington. We also
raise our concerns at OSCE fora, such as the weekly permanent council
meetings in Vienna, most recently on July 4th.
To amplify U.S. government concerns, I have traveled to Azerbaijan
three times since taking my current position in DRL. I was there in
June 2011, last December, and in April of this year.
While in Azerbaijan, I've met with government officials at the
highest levels, as well as democratic reform advocates, such as
political party and civil society leaders, independent journalists and
defense lawyers.
In the most recent visit, in April, to demonstrate solidarity with
families of incarcerated democracy activists, I also met with Vafa
Mammadova, the wife of ReAl presidential candidate Ilgar Mammadov, who
has been in pre-trial detention for more than five months.
In my meetings, I have urged our partners, our counterparts in the
government of Azerbaijan to respect universally recognized freedoms
such as freedom of expression, assembly, and association, and not to
penalize individuals for attempting to exercise these freedoms. I also
have emphasized the importance of fostering an environment conducive to
pluralism among civil society organizations, political parties and
media outlets as a foundation of true long-term stability.
While in Baku in mid-April, and inter-agency delegation that I co-
led with USAID Assistant Administration Paige Alexander, we conveyed
these messages to senior government officials and non-government
leaders. In addition to the Department of State and USAID, the
Department of Justice also participated in our inter-agency delegation
to convey our strong support for strengthening the rule of law.
In April, I urged Azerbaijani authorities to take four concrete
steps to enhance political stability during this important election
year.
First, to investigate what appeared to be credible reports of
harassment of lawyers defending journalists and activists, with an eye
towards ending interference in the work of lawyers who play a pivotal
role in establishing the rule of law in modern societies.
Second, to immediately release arrested democracy activists, such
as Ilgar Mammadov--the European Parliament called in a resolution
adopted on June 13th for his immediate and unconditional release, and
we echo that, as well as others who have been incarcerated for having
exercised their fundamental freedoms.
Third, to engage in a real dialogue with Azerbaijani civil society,
including those such as Free Thought University and other
nongovernmental, nonprofit organizations that are trying to advance
civic culture and democratic principles, as well with international
organizations that are present in Azerbaijan to support the country's
democratic development. An important part of this broader dialogue
would be to facilitate the timely registration of those NGOs that have
sought to register with the appropriate authorities.
Fourth, to create conditions that would be conducive to open public
debate and the unhindered functioning of political parties during this
election year. As I said in public and in private in April, in Baku, is
it up to Azerbaijanis to decide on the future of political developments
in their country. The interest of the United States is solely in
assuring that these decisions are reached through democratic,
transparent processes and institutions.
The Azerbaijani people will have a choice of leadership in the
presidential election this coming October. The government of Azerbaijan
has an opportunity now to take bold steps to improve the political
environment and to begin establishing the conditions that are necessary
for a more open, competitive, fair and democratic electoral process, a
process that doesn't take place just on election day but throughout
these next several months.
Let me emphasize here the importance of three freedoms that are
fundamental to democratic electoral processes and that are also
discussed in the OSCE ODHIR's July 12th needs assessment mission
report.
First is freedom of association. We will look for unhindered
candidate registration, election campaigns and access to the media.
Azerbaijanis should be able to join the non-governmental organization,
political party or political movement of their choice without fear of
detention or other punitive measures.
Second, freedom of expression--we will look for an environment
conducive to an open public dialogue and freedom of the media.
Azerbaijanis should be able to peacefully express their views, and
receive and impart information and ideas without fear of detention or
other obstacles. Similarly, journalists and media outlets should be
able to do their work without fear of beatings, imprisonment, threats,
loss of employment or other interference in the dissemination of their
work.
Third, and finally, freedom of assembly--we will look for respect
for freedom of peaceful assembly, including unhindered meetings between
candidates and voters, and rallies that are accessible by public
transportation without the risk of detention.
We urge the government of Azerbaijan to conduct a free and fair
electoral process as observed by both domestic and international
monitors. We will look for the ability of domestic monitors to
organize, gain access to the electoral process and to report their
observations.
Timely registration of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Study
center, EMDS, one of the country's leading independent election
monitoring organizations would be another positive step. And we welcome
Foreign Minister Mammadyarov's statement that Azerbaijan intends to
invite ODIHR and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly to monitor the October
election. We're pleased that ODIHR conducted a needs assessment mission
in June. And we urge the government to issue the requisite formal
invitations soon.
Finally, I want to highlight a statement made yesterday by
Ambassador Morningstar, who said that, quote now, ``During this
election year, it is particularly important for the Azerbaijani
government to help guarantee the free flow of information to its
people.'' In this connection, I urge the government to expeditiously
investigate the problems recently encountered by RFERL and other
Azerbaijani language media outlets in broadcasting some of their
satellite programming to Azerbaijanis.
In closing, I would like to stress that the United States engages
in human rights and democracy promotion with Azerbaijan as a friend and
partner. Here, I would like to cite an Azerbaijani saying, which I'm
doing with some trepidation: (In Azerbaijani)--which I'm told by my
experts means a friend with speak with no curtain or veil. Is that a
reasonable translation? It's just not a reasonable pronunciation
probably. I should learn some more? All right. I'll learn more by the
next hearing.
In my numerous meetings with Azerbaijanis, I've heard directly that
enhanced respect for universal human rights and fundamental freedoms,
rule of law and clear steps toward liberalization and democracy,
including a democratic electoral process are reforms that Azerbaijanis
widely seek. Such reforms would also strengthen our bilateral
relationship. Our strongest and most durable relationships around the
world are with democracies that respect human rights in addition to
sharing other interests with us.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to the remainder of
the discussion.
Ms. Han. Thank you, Mr. Melia. I appreciate that.
Now we're going to switch seats and we'll invite the Ambassador
Suleymanov to join us and to give your statement. We really appreciate
that the ambassador is participating today. I think it's important to
have a full range of voices on this issue and we appreciate his
participation.
Mr. Suleymanov. Thank you.
Ms. Han. Mr. Ambassador, you have the floor.
Mr. Suleymanov. Thank you very much. Mr. Carter, Ms. Han, thank you
very much for the opportunity to speak before the U.S. commission,
Helsinki Commission, and by monitoring the human rights and
comprehensive security, you have done a great job. We appreciate your
commitment. Thank you very much. I have submitted a comprehensive
version of my remarks and I will make just major points so you could
see.
The partnership between the United States and Azerbaijan is
important to each of our countries. It's based on common values and
common interests, in energy, regional security, and a variety of
issues. I understand, as Mr. Carter pointed out, shoulder to shoulder
in Iraq--and we were in Iraq and Kosovo, now we stand in the Balkans.
But modern reforms have always been an important part of our
dialogue. In fact, Azerbaijan today is the only country in the South
Caucuses which co-finances the civil society promotion projects, 50
percent co-financed with USAID jointly. We always appreciate friendly
and helpful advice from our friends.
I take Mr. Carter's statement that today's briefing is a reflection
of our friendly and strategic partnership and that's why you have a
briefing on Azerbaijan, not on other countries which had elections
recently. That's why I'm here representing my government, as a
reflection of our partnership with you as well.
I also take at face value your statement that you do not take sides
in Azerbaijani political system and debate. I look forward to
maintaining an objective view, which we hope will be maintained
throughout this discussion. I'm yet to see the full confirmation of
that.
I also am talking among friends, as our good friend, Mr. Melia has
said, in Azerbaijani. You don't want me to speak without any veil with
my American friends. I could go a little bit too critical, you know
that. I will not do that. However, I will also speak as a state talk
among friends.
I respectfully reject the wrongful claim about going to
authoritarianism in Azerbaijan. We do not accept that. In fact, make no
mistake. What is going on in Azerbaijan is a truly independent nation
with a vibrant political system and a free market economy. What is
going on is a secular government with diverse and inclusive society,
where members of every faith can live together with dignity and mutual
respect. What is going on is prosperity and economic opportunities for
all our citizens, and I think that should be recognized here today.
Azerbaijan is an ancient civilization but a young democracy in a
tough neighborhood. That was mentioned here as well. Just like every
nation on earth, we are not perfect.
Consider the obstacles we must overcome. Our country has been
independent for 22 years since ending of the communist rule for seven
decades. Now, we suffer from the Armenian occupation of almost 1
percent--one-fifth of our international recognized territory and
displacement of about one million people from their homes.
Since restoring independence, Azerbaijan has been building a free,
democratic society, where everyone living on our soil can equally and
fully enjoy human rights and fundamental freedoms regardless of their
racial, religious and ethnic background.
Now, I want to make this point very importantly. We believe that
tolerance, inclusiveness and diversity and gender rights are
fundamental pillars of a democratic system. They're often overlooked,
easily dismissed. We often go to the procedural issues, and say, OK.
This, Azeris got that, that's OK. We don't need to talk about it. But
that is what forms democracy and that's where democracy fails is
exactly what we don't have sufficient respect for tolerance,
inclusiveness and diversity and I think that's a fundamental point I
want to make. Azerbaijan is very proud of its--In that, I think
Azerbaijan can actually be an example for many on how to be an
inclusive society, tolerant and respectful of all its citizens,
regardless of their background and ethnicity.
We still have to do a lot of work to eliminate the vestiges of the
Soviet mentality, to address our challenges, among them fighting
corruption and building democratic institutions. That's obvious. But
our progress is remarkable. It is especially remarkable if you look at
the neighborhood we live. I mean, that's an important factor.
Now, before I go any further, I want to talk about the elephant in
the room. We could try to dismiss it. We could not mention it. But the
major and the greatest and the gravest challenge facing the citizens of
the Republic of Azerbaijan is the ongoing occupation, forceful
displacement of one million of my people. We could talk about all the
rights of our people. We could talk about all we want, but we cannot
ignore the fact that one million of Azerbaijanis--children, women and
men--have been living outside their homes, forcefully displaced, having
no rights for reproductive health, gender, voting, health care, and
education. I think that's very important.
In that spirit, I am actually somewhat surprised by the bizarre
move by our colleagues from the Armenian Assembly of America who
decided to submit their testimony here.
First of all, I thought it was a discussion on Azerbaijan. I
haven't seen that testimony, but I believe that it addresses three very
important issues. I hope it addresses the fact that the Armenian
government today grossly violates the rights of Azerbaijani displaced
people. I hope they submitted it because there was no event on Armenian
elections, which are very problematic, and it addresses the fact that
presidential candidates get shot in Armenia before the elections. Since
you didn't have the event on that, I hope our Armenian friends actually
mentioned that in their own submission.
I do hope that they express concern with their government's
treatment of Moldovan human rights commissioner Mrs. Aurelia Grigoriu,
who was kidnapped and held hostage in the Republic of Armenia by the
government of Armenia. I hope those things are outlined in that
particular statement. I think that's a welcome one. If it is aimed at
bashing Azerbaijan, then I would take an issue with Mr. Carter's
statement about objectivity of this event today.
In three months, the citizens of Azerbaijan will exercise their
constitutional and civic right to elect the president of the republic
to lead the nation over the next five years. We will do everything
possible to hold democratic elections that the Azerbaijani people
deserve and expect because the future of independent Azerbaijan is and
should be decided and determined only by our citizens living in
Azerbaijan, not in foreign capitals, not in neighboring capitals.
That's a very important point.
For those Azerbaijani citizens who are living abroad, our
diplomatic missions, including one which I lead, will be open and
providing an opportunity to vote. And I encourage everybody to register
with our consulate and exercise their right and civic duty to vote for
the president of the Republican of Azerbaijan once the election
campaign begins.
Since adopting our constitution in 1995, Azerbaijan has been
creating the mechanism to protect human rights, extensive democracy and
ensure rule of law. We benefit from our ever expanding participation in
the European community and strong support from the United States and
other members of the worldwide community of democratic societies.
We joined the Council of Europe in 2001. It's an important step. By
2014, Azerbaijan will assume for the first time the chairmanship of the
Committee of the Ministers Council of Europe.
To our national program to raise awareness of the protection of
human rights, we're building institutions that gives life to a free
society. There are five issues on that, five building blocks for
democracy.
For our democracy, first, a fully functioning, independent
judiciary is not a choice but a prerogative. It's an imperative. In the
very short term of time, the national judiciary and legal system has
been organized subject to democratic principles. We are working very
hard and include the World Bank and other international institutions to
build a depoliticized judicial system which is independent of any
interference.
Second, freedom of expression, which is the lifeblood of democracy.
In Azerbaijan today, there are about 5,000 media outlets affiliated to
a wide range of private organizations and individuals. Some of them are
here. There are about 40 daily and 200 weekly and monthly newspapers.
There are 50 information agencies.
Our state fund for support of mass media supports newspapers and
other outlets, including opposition papers without interfering with
their content. In 2010, under the program initiated by President
Muhavaliv, around $6.4 million have been allocated to strengthening the
social protection for journalists, including housing assistance.
President's fund for support of media actually allocates money to
the very media which spends most of the time criticizing the
government. We have a fund which does not interfere with the work of
journalists.
Freedom of expression includes freedom of Internet. In Azerbaijan,
there's absolutely unrestricted Internet access. About 65 percent of
the Azerbaijani population have access to Internet. We will increase
that number. We're working very hard and we appreciate the help from
our American friends on working with us to make it about 100 percent
connectivity. Of course, that is an ambitious goal and we'll try to as
much.
Still, democracy requests a vibrant civil society. Within the last
five years, the council of state support to NGOs has allocated more
than $14 million to 1,800 projects. Azerbaijan is a lively--and the
political discourse is very diverse with many voices, including the
opposition, and much of that support also goes to the opposition
groups.
Fourth, a strong democracy required educated citizens. Our top
priority is developing our human capital. What happens is Azerbaijan is
launching additional reforms in education. I think everybody who
watches Azerbaijan closely knows that. And we will also provide full
government support for our students studying abroad, about 5,000
Azerbaijani students studying abroad in leading institutions
internationally.
Fifth, and I think this is the most visible and the most--not a
civil progress been in combating corruption. I appreciate Mr. Melia
mentioning the ASAN service, which has basically revolutionized and
opened access of Azerbaijani citizens to their government services.
We're fighting corruption. In fact, one of the interesting things
you would look at is that Transparency International, with which we
often disagree and which is mostly very critical of many governments
around the world, has noticed an increase of corruption instances
throughout the world and decrease of such in Azerbaijan. I think that
recognition should be mentioned here as well.
Prosperity of the Azerbaijani people is increasing. Azerbaijan
today accounts for 80 percent, 80 percent of South Caucuses economy.
And, you know, the poverty level has came down from 49 percent to 6
percent. We are facing a population whose welfare is increasing on a
regular basis.
Once again, before I complete my words, I would like to point out
that the greatest support the United States government can do to for
our people is to help us, us and Armenians to come at the end of the
day to a solution and a fair settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan
conflict so finally our people have the ability to fully enjoy the
rights, which are very basic rights. We're not talking about freedom of
assembly even. We're talking rights to live and rights to basically
enjoy their lives as human beings in dignity.
With that, I think the one very important step would be, very
obviously, to encourage the United States to appoint a full-time
negotiator, which is the United States is lacking. And while I
appreciate the statements made by the U.S. government at the OSCE
Council in Vienna, I would be also very appreciative if equal attention
would be paid to the mistreatment of Azerbaijani citizens and made an
effort to resolve the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.
In closing, let me welcome all the representatives of Azerbaijan
who are here, both from the government and from the opposition. You
could see that we have a vibrant society. You read about the activities
of our different political groups from the media, which is actually
freely accessible to you. Our people have events, which are held
without much interference. And we appreciate American support to
Azerbaijan in general and our working together with Americans on
promoting democracy and reforms in our part of the world.
We appreciate your support and thank you for your attention. And I
will be remaining here for the remainder of the discussion. Thank you
very much.
Ms. Han. Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador. I appreciate your
remarks. We do look forward to have you back up on the panel after this
next panel.
If I could invite Mr. Namazov, Mr. Gadirli, Dr. Lanskoy, and Mr.
Seyidov. Yeah. Thank you.
OK. We'd like to start with Mr. Namazov, if you could start off the
panel. And he'll be using our interpreter to make his statement. Thank
you.
Mr. Namazov. Thank you for inviting me to this event. I represent
here the National Council of Democratic Forces in Azerbaijan and I
speak on their behalf. I have travelled 6,000 miles here to speak about
the realities of Azerbaijan, which makes less than one minute for a
mile. Yeah. For one mile. Yeah. Less than one minute for a mile.
I encourage you to look into the documents that I'm going to
distribute. These are the statements from our council and information
we'd like to disperse. For the first time since Azerbaijan regained its
independence, leading Azerbaijani political party leaders and delegates
here, representatives of civil society, media captains, youth have
united together in the eve of presidential elections creating the
national council and they have agreed to go to this election with a
single candidate.
Our council has prepared a special declaration, a paper discussing
the next two years that will happen if we win the elections, that
discusses the major reforms, legal and democratic reforms that will
take during the two years.
Another document that we have adopted and it will be also
distributed to you is our request or is our petition to law enforcement
agencies in Azerbaijan that discusses the situation of the president
that foreign media has written about, about allegations about various
properties around the world that are significant corruption cases that
we want to be investigated. These are serious facts that we have asked
the central election commission, public prosecutor's office, Supreme
Court to investigate because these are important allegations that need
to be investigated, which are about the president. We will try to get
concrete responses from these institutions why they have not done
anything so far to start those investigations.
Another important document that I will distribute today is a letter
written from jail. This is a letter written by arrested members of NIDA
youth movement who are in jail now. And just yesterday, two more
members of the youth groups, Ulvi Hasanli and Megedli have been
arrested while they were helping us to prepare documents for here.
Out of 129 member of the national council, 12 are in jail now. And,
of course, we demand the release of all political prisoners. The names
were mentioned today, Ilgar Mammadov, Yadigar Sadiqov, and others who
are in jail now should all be released.
The spread of corruption and lack of social justice leads to the
situation when without intervention of political parties in Azerbaijan,
people in rural areas, in districts rise against the corrupt officials.
All this social crisis in Azerbaijan and political-social crisis
shows that Azerbaijan needs to have reforms, needs to have significant
changes. If democratic elections are not held in Azerbaijan, chaos and
confrontations wait Azerbaijan, which will significantly damage its
relationship with partners and with its neighbors.
At the end of my presentation, I would like to pass to you three
important messages of our national council to you.
First is to exert appropriate pressure on Azerbaijani government
officials who have violated freedom of rights similar to that of the
Magnitsky Act. To liberalize pre-election situation, all political
prisoners should be released, the right of freedom, right of assembly,
freedom of expression have to be restored. And there should be no
pressure on independent media and their outlets. The electoral
legislation has to be reformed based on recommendations from ODIHR and
OSCE and Venice Commission, Council of Europe.
We want the provision by independent institute, provision of exit
polls in Azerbaijan from independent institutions because all previous
elections in Azerbaijan have been falsified and they did not meet
international standards. The democratic elections need to be born in
Azerbaijan. They're not only an issue related to the people of
Azerbaijan but also to the security and stability of Azerbaijan.
I hope our American partners understand the same way as we do that
to transition to a democratic government is necessary. Thank you so
much.
Ms. Han. Thank very much, Mr. Namazov. I appreciate that. I think
you got more miles out of that statement than you originally planned.
Dr. Seyidov, we welcome your participation.
Mr. Seyidov. Thank you very much for having me today. I think that
this is really very important to take part in this briefing and to
discuss issues which are related to my country.
Of course, my ambassador made my life so easy. He actually
presented facts which I thought to present. And that's why I will try
to cover much more with the situation with human rights, with the
geopolitical situation in Azerbaijan.
Let me start with my disagreement with Mr. Carter's statement that
today we are here and today we are not going to discuss the Nagorno-
Karabakh issue, and we are thinking only about human rights and we
should think about human rights.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a problem of human rights. That's a great
violation of the human rights of Azerbaijanis. One million
approximately Azerbaijanis have been violated and ethnically cleansed
from Azerbaijan. And to think and discuss a human rights issue in the
Azerbaijani region without the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, that's
impossible. We should take into account this reality.
The second remark, my disagreement with the title of today's
briefing, troubled partner--``Troubled partners and growing
authoritarianism in Azerbaijan.'' Trouble partner, how can it be
possible? We as a state, as Azerbaijan, opened all our facilities for
America exactly after 9/11. We're today doing our best for the
coalition and our soldiers shoulder to shoulder fighting in
Afghanistan, in Iraq and Kosovo, as you said. We are doing our best not
only for our country, for the region, but for Europe and the United
States of America.
That's why I think that you lost the focus. The real troubled
partner is not far from us, the country which created the occupation of
my land, the country which ethnically cleansed 20 percent of my
territory, a country where the real human rights is really dangerous.
My second remark is about growing authoritarianism in Azerbaijan.
You know, Mr. Namazov just said that today we can see in Azerbaijan
that democratic forces try to unite and this is very good and unique
opportunity to see in Azerbaijan, but who created this environment.
When our foreign visitors, guests came to Azerbaijan, already you have
mentioned that your opposition is very fragile. Your opposition is
really very weak. Today, opposition is sitting together with us and
talking about the future of Azerbaijan. Is it authoritarian regime? Or
maybe we can say that just a few days ago the leading chief of the
very, very radical oppositional newspaper became a member of the board
which has been created by after the congress, journalist congress in
Azerbaijan. And this is the real sign of democratization, not the sign
of authoritarianism.
Or maybe we should talk about the role of the woman in Azerbaijan.
I can speak about other things and today, I think, my ambassador is
absolutely right. What we can see in Azerbaijan, that's a growing
economy, growing our relationships with neighboring countries, and
growing the role of Azerbaijan in our region. Maybe because of that and
exactly because of that today we can see that pressure from different
regions, from different countries are growing. Not authoritarianism is
growing in Azerbaijan. I'm from parliament, I can't say, but attempts
to destabilize situation in Azerbaijan is growing.
Today, Azerbaijan maybe is a last state in our region which
defending Western values and cooperation with Europe and United States
of America. We have seen what had happened to Georgia, to Ukraine, what
kind of processes is going on in Russian Federation. And I think today
so strong pressure to Azerbaijan exactly because of our desire to be
together with the rest of the democratic and civilized world.
The president of Azerbaijan is a leader who is doing his best for
integration with Europe and with the United States of America. And
that's why I'm so proud that today my government said yes to Trans-
Anatolian pipeline, which bring closer Italy, Albania, Greece, Turkey,
Georgia to Europe and to United States of America.
Of course, we are not so perfect, but we are doing our best. We
became a member of the Council of Europe, where 47 countries are
existing. Next year, we will chair the Council of Europe. At the same
time, we are very active in the Islamic Conference. We have the special
attitudes concerning cooperation between East and West. From this point
of view important to take into account that this kind of discussions,
when opposition and people who are not agree with you can see express
their views much more important than use Molotov cocktail against the
government, against the forces in Azerbaijan. I ask my colleagues and
friends to understand that democracy is a rule of law and human rights
that's a discussions, exchange of views, not use of force.
Today, human rights is a very, very special issue for Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan has joined to the European Charter of the Human Rights.
We're under jurisdiction of the European Court for Human Rights. You
can compare the number of appeals from Azerbaijan and from countries
who are member of the European Union: United Kingdom, Romania,
Bulgaria, France, and other countries. And you can see that the number
of appeals from Azerbaijan much more less than from these countries.
You can compare the number of prisoners within the prisons in
Azerbaijan, in Georgia, in France, in United Kingdom, and you will see
that the number of prisoners within the prison in Azerbaijan, according
the European standards, and especially taking into account the last
pardoning decrees and amnesties which adopted by the parliament.
You can see that day by day the number of women within the
parliament and within the municipalities are growing. From this point
of view, the last municipality elections and parliamentary elections
gave us possibility to have approximately 20 percent members of the
woman at the parliament and more than 30 percent women at the
municipalities.
Today, Azerbaijan is doing its best for human rights and for
democracy, rule of law not only within the country, but taking in all
programs, in all initiatives. My president just recently has signed the
special action plan to improve human rights situation in Azerbaijan.
As you know, we are coming to the chair position at the Council of
Europe at the middle of the 2014. An action plan on the discussion
together with Council of Europe concerning human rights development in
Azerbaijan. That's impossible to change everything overnight. Only 20
years, we are an independent country.
United States of America 237 years is independent, but even in
United States of America we can see some problematic issues.
The most important thing, the political will of the country to
change, to see, new developments, new reforms, and government of
Azerbaijan is keen to provide these reforms.
We have sent an invitation to the Council of Europe to see
observation mission for presidential elections here, this year, in
October. 32 members from the Council of Europe will be in Azerbaijan
for pre-election mission and for election mission.
The same invitation will be sent from Azerbaijan to other
international organizations. But what we don't want to see and what we
have seen during the last parliamentary elections and presidential
elections in Azerbaijan, previously prepared opinion, previously
prepared papers about the results of the elections in Azerbaijan, about
the situation in Azerbaijan.
Today, my country is struggle for democratization, human rights,
and rule of law. The war, the struggle is going on. We, as Azerbaijani
representatives, we are doing all our best being surrounding with very
difficult neighbors. Could you imagine from one side so great, so big,
so influential Russian Federation? From another side, fundamentalistic
and fundamentalistic tensions and Iran. Twenty percent of territories
under occupation. Situation in Georgia, which is not so understandable.
Taking into account all these difficulties, Azerbaijani leadership is
insisting to be together with the rest of the civilized world and to do
its best.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Han. Thank you very much for that.
Next, I'd like to call on Mr. Gadirli, if you can. I'm sorry I'm
not saying anybody's title, so I apologize for that. You are the
representative of the ReAl network. I'll rely on you to explain your
affiliation. Thanks.
Mr. Gadirli. Thank you very much. I also would like to express my
personal gratitude for having been invited for such an event.
I sincerely welcome our Azerbaijani friends, Mr. Ambassador. It's
very rare opportunity for us to sit together in our own country. I'm
bit confused because I had another idea of what I'm going to say before
coming here. Now, listening to the previous presentation, I've a bit
changed my mind.
I would like to start with a quote. The quote goes like this. ``Do
you know where Azerbaijan is? Well, today, they came in a group of very
interesting and intelligent gentlemen who are coming from Azerbaijan. I
couldn't have time to find until they begun where they came from, but I
find this out immediately, that I was talking to men who talk exactly
the same language that I did in respect of ideas, in respect of
conceptions of liberty, in respect of conceptions of justice and
rights.'' End of quote.
These words belong to the president of the United States Woodrow
Wilson. Actually wrote these words after meeting with Azerbaijani
delegation to Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
That was a time when Azerbaijan established its first republic. Was
not only the first in Azerbaijani history, but in the history of entire
Muslim world and the Turk people, in fact, the first republic in that
geography.
At that time, the population was very poor, illiterate, only 64
people held university degree. The war with Armenia over Karabakh was
still ongoing. Azerbaijan was threatened by its neighbors, yet the
people was capable of effectively establishing a republic without any
foreign aid.
The strategies then was to seek an international recognition of
that republic. Now, today, we are independent and proudly so. Never in
our history our society was as rich as it is today. Our population is
literate. The level of literacy is well above 90 percent. But there're
certain differences that I would like to talk about.
When we had the first republic Azerbaijan was exporting ideas to
some of its neighbors such as Persia, as it was then called, and
Ottoman Empire, ideas out of which, among many other things, a Turkish
Republic evolved. It was Azerbaijan from where ideas of Turkishness,
pantropism, and republicanism went to Turkey, not the other way around.
Now, today, we're a country which jams radios, which bans
opposition to appear on the television, which effectively shuns other
sorts of media who have nationwide broadcast. Not only opposition, but
different thinking intellectuals are not allowed to appear on
television.
When we had the republic, in the second decade of the 20th century,
within two years that the republic was alive, the government changed
four times. We have five governmental coalition. Well, to some this is
a sign of political instability. Yes, there is some portion of truth in
that. But it also signifies the culture of negotiation, coordination,
and cooperation that Azerbaijan had at that time.
Today, that is exactly what our society is like. Today, we have a
society ruled by one family, effectively, since 1969, with a short
break in the '80s. When we had the first republic, we had a prime
minister, who after his resignation wrote a letter to his father asking
for a financial help because he was short of money after resignation.
Today, we read from various sources reports about billions of wealth
owned by ruling elite.
Now, all that is possible today because we don't have a republic.
This is the strategy that--and the challenge that our nation is facing.
I join and I don't want just to reiterate, but I want to undersign what
Mr. Ambassador and other--Samad Seyidov that said about the Karabakh
issue. Our nation stands united, so there is no fundamental
disagreement on that.
There're few disagreements about details, but in general--so that
has nothing to do with being in opposition in Azerbaijan, even though
we sometimes see it from the government side that opposition is either
trying to destabilize the situation or sell out the country order.
I represent here Republican Alternative. That it's opposition
movement. We are on the way to transforming our movement into a
political party. The chairman of our board is in jail now. He was
arrested on February 4, still kept in custody. The charges he's facing
with are quite serious. He made up in jail for another 12 years. But in
fact, what he was arrested for? Exactly because he was advocating for
republican ideals, because he was advocating for Euro-Atlantic
integration, the deep integration, the true integration.
The republicanism--I know that this word can confuse American
audiences, but I'm speaking not in terms of political parties, but in
terms of the trend, the form of the government--can be organized in
various forms. When we had the first republic, the people then had a
vision and knowledge and the courage and very difficult environment
compared to which we have today, but even in a harder situation, to
create a parliamentary form of government. They were aware of a
presidential form. They knew that--the system in America, how it was
organized. But they had a deeper vision about the future of the
country. They somehow intuitively knew that presidential system
wouldn't fit our country.
In fact, if you study, whoever tried to copy the American system of
the government--take Latin America, post-Soviet countries, African
countries, whoever tried to have a strong president as a head of
executive failed in democracy building.
That fact is quite telling. So another challenge in front of us is
to transform our country into a proper parliamentary republic which
will reflect the diversity of the country, where political parties can
cooperate, negotiate, establish coalitions. What we don't have is a
republic. We will pursue this goal. We will continue to follow our
strategy because it is much more than simply changing the government.
If you simply change the people, I mean the officials, that
wouldn't work. The deeper understanding is required. A country must be
radically reformed and transformed.
But anyway, I better stop here because I assume there will be
questions and I will have more time on detail. Thank you.
Ms. Han. Thank you very much, Mr. Gadirli.
Now, I'd like to turn to our final witness, Dr. Miriam Lanskoy.
She's the director for Russia and Eurasia at the National Endowment for
Democracy.
Ms. Lanskoy. I'm very grateful to the Helsinki Commission for
holding this briefing and for giving me the opportunity to speak about
democracy and human rights in Azerbaijan.
The National Endowment for Democracy is a private, nonprofit
foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic
institutions around the world. The NED has been working in Azerbaijan
since the mid 1990s and has supported various projects there.
Over the last decade, freedom in Azerbaijan has declined
substantially. The Nations in Transit Index shows a deep decline in
every category of governance and the combined score going from 5.6 to
6.6. President Ilham Aliyev, who came to power in 2003, is now seeking
a third term as president. This was forbidden by the constitution until
2009, when term limits were removed, opening the way to any number of
future terms as president.
The early months of 2013 saw an unexpected increase in social
unrest. And this was followed by a harsh government crackdown. There
were various protests, some in Baku and some in the regions, some of
which became violent. There were peaceful rallies in Baku that were
violently dispersed by the police, who used water cannons and rubber
bullets. Dozens of peaceful protesters were fined and sentenced to
short periods of administrative detention. I provide a lot more detail
in my written comments, but here, in the interest of time, I'm going to
focus on a few things that I consider being the most pressing issues.
Human Rights Watch reports 16 critics of the government who have
been arrested in the first six months of 2013. Two prominent opposition
figures, Tofiq Yaqublu of Musavat and Ilgar Mammadov of ReAl have
already--already been mentioned here and they have already been in jail
for six months waiting trial on false charges of having instigated
civil unrest in Ismayilli. Seven members of the youth movement NIDA
have been in jail since March. And four of them are considered Amnesty
International prisoners of conscience.
Human Rights Watch has profiled other cases of opposition youth
activists who apparently had drugs planted on them by police. Some of
them are religious activists as well.
In the realm of media, freedom of information has also declined in
the first half of 2013. The government has, for a long time, controlled
broadcast media and most newspapers, but now it is trying to establish
greater control on the Internet and in satellite broadcasts.
June 2013 amendments to the criminal code made defamation on the
Internet a criminal offense, making it possible to make criminal cases
against online activists. Since April 2013, signals carrying Azeri
language news produced by Radio Free Europe have been jammed.
There's also been problems with respect to NGOs. A new amendment in
the NGO law increases existing sanctions against unregistered NGO
activity in conjunction with arbitrary denial of registration, which
places activists in an impossible position. They cannot work without
registration, but they're arbitrarily denied registration. The case of
EMDS has already been mentioned.
The youth organization OL!, which ran a highly successful free
thought university, was shut down suddenly this spring. Several
articles and statements smearing the work of NDI and NED appeared in
March.
Freedom of religion is another area of steep decline this year. The
U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom has downgraded
Azerbaijan to a tier two country. The commission focused its criticism
on a 2009 law on religion, which led to numerous raids, detentions, and
arrests.
I'd like to turn now to the pre-election environment which is
probably of greatest interest to the Commission. In a July 2nd speech,
President Aliyev seemed to encourage the police to abuse the
opposition. He recalled that during past elections, international
organization sought investigations into the conduct of police, to which
he said, ``I said back then and I want to say again now that not a
single policemen will be punished.'' President Aliyev went on to
characterize his political opponents as traitors, betrayers, slave-
minded people.
Opposition activists are harassed, detained, barred from travel.
There's been no sanctioned rally in the center of Baku since 2006. And
unsanctioned rallies are broken up violently.
Despite this deepening authoritarianism, there has been a very
significant development. In May, the National Council was formed. It is
an umbrella organization that brings together opposition, politicians,
NGOs, scholars, youth, bloggers, and even former government officials.
In June, the National Council resolved to support a single presidential
candidate from all the opposition forces. They chose Rustam
Ibragimbekov, an Oscar-winning director and screenwriter who is revered
in Azerbaijan.
The National Council has outlined an ambitious program for
constitutional reform that would reduce the powers of the president,
institute checks and balances, and restore basic freedoms.
Going into this election period, which is likely to be more
competitive and more volatile than recent elections, ensuring
independent and credible vote monitoring is of the outmost importance.
Many contentious issues, including the registration of Mr. Ibragimbekov
or other opposition candidates as they come forth and their ability to
campaign are likely to require international attention.
Domestic election monitoring organization EMDS remains
unregistered. Domestic monitors are very vulnerable in the absence of a
large and comprehensive OSCE mission. As has already been observed
here, there still has not been an official invitation for OSCE
monitoring.
A preliminary ODIHR report indicates a request for 30 long-term and
280 short-term observers. It would be better if this mission could be
larger. By comparison, there were 600 observers in Azerbaijan in 2003
in the presidential elections and there were 400 in Georgia last year.
And Georgia has, by far, fewer polling stations.
In closing, I'm very grateful to the Helsinki Commission for
convening this briefing. It comes at a very important time. I hope that
you will remain equally engaged in the coming months and will continue
to call attention to the cases of political prisoners and the ability
of civil society to do their work without harassment and intimidation.
Thank you.
Ms. Han. Thank you, Dr. Lanskoy.
I'd like to bring all of our panelists back up, if you don't mind.
Mr. Melia, you'll be joining us over here. We're going to squeeze
everyone down.
OK. I think we're all set and I'm going to turn to Paul for the
first--to start us off, ask a couple of questions, and then we'll turn
to audience.
Mr. Carter. OK. I want to give the audience time here to ask
questions, so I won't take much. Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much
for your remarks. I noted when you said that the government of
Azerbaijan would do all that it could to ensure a democratic election,
I thought that was a very good point. Can you assure the Helsinki
Commission that Mr. Rustam Ibragimbekov will be allowed to return to
Azerbaijan without the threat of arrest and to conduct a campaign for
the presidency free of harassment by the government?
Mr. Suleymanov. Mr. Carter, thank you very much for your question.
Well, I don't know of any obstacles for Mr. Ibragimbekov to come back
to Azerbaijan when he wishes. I genuinely believe that a person who
wants to run for a leadership position in Azerbaijan needs, first of
all, to be in Azerbaijan and perhaps to be citizen of Azerbaijan. That
would be helpful.
Azerbaijan has laws which have been in place for a long time. It's
not a new procedure. If Mr. Ibragimbekov actually--his candidacy and
nomination complies--first of all, he has to be nominated by a number--
there're special rules. There has to be 40,000 people registered voters
submitting the request. They have to come for at least from 60
precincts and he has to basically be registered by the Central
Electoral Commission in compliance with Azerbaijani laws.
Those laws, as a matter of fact, require no commitment to any other
foreign nation. As it stands now, it is my understanding that Mr.
Ibragimbekov is a citizen of the Russian Federation. While we do enjoy
our friendly relationships with the citizens of Russian Federation, we
do try to elect people in our country who are citizens of Azerbaijan
only. So should his procedures be done, that's up to him. We don't
interfere with his decision-making. And should he comply with all the
requirements for a presidential candidate, I don't know of any reason
not to do that.
But now, let me tell you something. I, as a representative of
Azerbaijan Republic and as a diplomat here, I have no power and no
direct influence over the Central Electoral Commission. So to make a
commitment on behalf of a body I do not control, I cannot. I can ask
you, for instance, can you assure that Section 907, which is obviously
a counterproductive part of the legislation, will be repealed? You
agree with me that that's wrong, but you do not have power over
parliament to commit to that.
So I think we're in equal situation. We'll do what we can, but he
has to comply with the Central Election Committee requirements.
Ms. Han. Mr. Melia, I wondered if I could ask you to just give us
some comments on this pre-election period is really often the most
important part of an election because on polling day, we've seen in
many places, the outcome is pretty much already predetermined because
of who's on the ballot and who gets registered and who's--so if you can
talk about what you would like to see happen in Azerbaijan and maybe
how the U.S. is engaging with Azerbaijan on this issue in this
important period.
Mr. Melia. Sure. Well, we're not treating Azerbaijan differently
than we would treat any other country. The kinds of assessment that we
do, the reports that we write, such in the Annual Human Rights report,
we apply the same standards globally and conducting consistent
assessment, as do, I think, many of the NGOs and think tanks that
describe political processes and so on.
You very correctly say--and I think I touched on this in my initial
statement, that an election doesn't just happen on voting day or vote
counting day. So an overall assessment of the electoral process
naturally includes what happens in the 90 days preceding an election.
And we're about at--all of the precise data hasn't been announced yet--
we're probably about 90 days out from the election right now.
The opportunity for candidates and voters to meet and assemble and
talk about ideas and to have some access to the broadcast media and
other opportunities to make their case to the voters, all of that will
be part of what we and international monitors from other countries will
be looking at.
As I said, release of Mr. Mammadov from prison--he's been in
pretrial detention for more than five months now--would be an important
step forward. He's an announced presidential candidate. He should have
a chance to talk to voters. So there's a number of things--I laid them
out in my testimony--that I think would be good steps in the right
direction to live up to the aspirations and commitments that I think
the ambassador conveyed and I think Azerbaijan is quite capable of.
Ms. Han. Thank you very much. I wanted to have two follow up quick
questions before we move on from--if Mr. Namazov would like to talk
about the status of Mr. Ibragimbekov and how--perhaps what the plans
are from your party's standpoint.
Mr. Gadirli, given that Mr. Mammadov is in prison, what options do
you have for his candidacy? Thanks.
Mr. Namazov. Thank you. I want to refer to previous question about
Mr. Ibragimbekov ability to travel to Azerbaijan and be registered as a
candidate. With this question, I want to mention that Mr. Ibragimbekov
has, in recent times, twice had problems in both entering and exiting
Azerbaijan at the border. State officials created troubles for him,
including border control and other agencies. Each time, I had to go to
the airport personally to help him out. And during this time, he was
held at the airport for several hours. And each time the border
officials that were mentioning to him personally that because he's
speaking against president, he's criticizing president, they're giving
him this trouble.
At that time Mr. Ibragimbekov was not our single candidate. He was
just an intellectual or a filmmaker.
Regarding the registration of him as a candidate, I want to
emphasize that our lawyers are working on his registration. According
to them, there're no legal obstacles that can prevent him to be
registered as a candidate. They will be working definitely on
collecting those signatures from the regions and et cetera, but even
prior to that, already, there're statements made from the government,
members of the ruling party, who openly say that he cannot be
registered as a candidate. This is before the elections.
We hope that our candidate will be registered, but if he's not
going to be registered, then legitimacy of these elections will be
questioned. And we as National Council will organize rallies to protect
his rights. But we wish that the government will change its mind and
register him as a candidate and not create extra problems for
themselves.
Ms. Han. OK. Mr. Gadirli, if you could answer, and then the
ambassador wanted to say something.
Mr. Suleymanov. Yes, I want to say something.
Ms. Han. OK.
Mr. Gadirli. Thank you. Now, Ilgar Mammadov situation, as I said,
he is in pretrial detention now, since February 4. No investigation
goes on. Actually, he was not visited by investigators since then, so
he's just kept there. That's quite indicative. That reveals the purpose
of his arrest, to keep him out of this election for various reasons,
because he is, as I said, stands for republicanism, stands for Euro-
Atlantic integration. He was capable to raise the hope of the new
generation of voters. In fact, one of the few positive changes that
goes on in Azerbaijan is a generational change, is an unstoppable and
uncontrollable.
So Ilgar Mammadov is dedicated, is devoted to his ideals, and he's
strong enough and he is--he has a will to stand in this election as a
candidate. And we as a group of his supporters and members of the
organization he's presiding over, will pursue with the nomination we
have announced earlier, January, February this year.
What if he's not registered, as I assume, that was the second part
of the question or--well, ideally, we have two options, either to have
another candidate from our organization, or to support someone else
from the opposition. Obviously, we're not going to support the
incumbent party's candidate. But is far too early to elaborate on that.
We continue with Ilgar Mammadov. He's our candidate. We will do our
best to try to get registered. With the registration, the entire
situation is rather confusing. It's not just about Ilham Aliyev himself
is not eligible to stand in election this year because the
constitution--you all know perhaps that the constitution was amended
and that limitation about for one person to be no more than two times
president in a row is now lifted. But that amendment was made after
Ilham Aliyev became president for the second time. Ilham Aliyev made a
constitutional promise to the people, he swore on the constitution. He
took an oath. And at that time, the constitution did contain that
limitation. So now Aliyev made a constitutional promise to the people
that he will not run--as a candidate--not become a president for more
than two times in a row.
So that amendment, if we stay within the logic of the law, which
forbids the retroactive application of amendments, is applicable.
Something from 2013, we still in principle disagree with that amendment
because we think that no more two times is the moral established
practice. But if that amendment is going to be applied, it should not
apply to Ilham Aliyev himself. And of course, given the brutal
situation at hand, if Ilham Aliyev is registered, then, of course, it
would be fair to register Rustam Ibragimbekov as well because,
regardless of some other legal obstacles he may have.
Ms. Han. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Seyidov. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for giving me
the floor. That's, you know, a very familiar picture. When facts which,
in front of us, try to present absolutely in different way, in not so
understandable way. This is the constitution of Azerbaijan, my dear
friends. Article 100 and I think you are familiar with the constitution
of Azerbaijan. I want to read the Article 100. Any citizen of the
Republic of Azerbaijan not younger than 35 years of age, who has
resided permanently on the territory of Republic of Azerbaijan, no
longer than 10 years--et cetera--previously committed a serious crime--
has no obligation to other states, has higher education, who has no
dual citizenship may be elected president of the Republic of
Azerbaijan.
We all knows that for at present, Mr. Ibragimbekov has his Russian
citizenship. He, today, is not able to be registered as a candidate for
the presidency. This is the constitution of Azerbaijan.
That's a very strange situation when my oppositional friends
talking about legal steps and democratic elections and they started
from violation of the constitution, the fundamental law of my country.
The same situation with my friend Mr. Gadirli. Mr. Gadirli, this is
your interpretation. I can bring a lot of lawyers who can bring you
absolutely different interpretation of the constitution of Azerbaijan,
but these amendments has been amended by the majority of Azerbaijani
population. My president has his right to be elected for the third
term.
That's why, please, my dear friends, the problem of Azerbaijani
opposition is not speak about the concrete steps, the concrete items
from the constitution and to think how can they avoid the law which
already adopted by Azerbaijani nation. We, as a leading party, we will
do our best to organize the election in a free and fair manner,
according to the constitution of Azerbaijan. Thank you.
Ms. Han. OK. I think that Mr. Namazov wants to address the--
hopefully, you'll address the citizenship issue. And then I really do
want to go to the audience.
Mr. Namazov. Well, it's apparent that the passport Rustam
Ibragimbekov had from Soviet times, that's a Soviet passport, which was
transferred--became a Russian citizenship passport, he has--he didn't
deny this fact, so he admits that he has a Russian passport. He's
submitted his recusal or refusal of his Russian citizenship to Russian
authorities. And according to Russian procedures--procedures in Russia,
within a matter of few weeks, maximum a month, the Russian government
has to make a decision on that--a positive decision on that request.
For me it's very strange that Mr. Samad Seyidov, the chairman of
the governmental committee--International Relations Committee, does not
want to see this. He has write about this in the media. There's just
the discussion about this, and is presenting this situation in a
different way. I try to find a soft way to say it, but I think
basically it's a lie.
Mr. Seyidov. I think this is a constitution. This is not my words.
Ms. Han. OK. Yeah. Now, I'm going to go to the audience now, and--
but first of all, I see there's a lot of interest and because of that
interest, I'm going to set some ground rules for your participation.
The first ground rule is that there's no statements. It has to be a
question, direct question--please, sit down, just one second please--
OK, a direct question and I'm going to time you. You get one minute to
ask your question. Then I'm going to ring this bell, OK? And then, that
will be the end of your question and we'll move to answer it. What
we're going to do is we'll take two or three questions, and then we'll
have the panelists respond, OK?
OK, first of all, I want to ask, are there any journalists that are
in the room because I would like to call on a journalist first?
Questioner. My name is Ilhan. I represent AZ, AZ news agency of
Azerbaijan. My question would be to Eldar Namazov. Rustam Ibragimbekov
is great person, valuable, well-known in Azerbaijan as merely the
person of art, scenarist, and so on. But it's known fact that he has
this dual citizenship and it's also known that he's been out of
Azerbaijan for very long time. At the same time, National Council is
uniting force of opposition. What I'm wondering about is why not to
find a candidate which lives in Azerbaijan, which has single
citizenship, and which can represent the whole country, and knows the
issues of the country, has been living with the people? So why to set
it up for failure basically?
Ms. Han. OK. I'm sorry, but I am going to take two or three
questions, and then we'll--OK--no, please, if you'll wait for the
microphone and identify yourself, thank you.
Questioner. Ramis Yunus. I'm former chief of staff of government.
I'm former chief of staff of parliament of Azerbaijan.
You talk and my question Samad Seyidov. Mr. Seyidov, you're talking
about constitution. According to international human right organization
such as Amnesty International, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and
regarding political prisons in Azerbaijan, political prisons--situation
in political prisons in Azerbaijan, can you tell us for everybody how
number--how many political prisoners today in Azerbaijan, number?
Ms. Han. OK, I'm going to take one more from this gentleman in the
second row, if you wait for the mic please.
Questioner. Hi. My name is Yusuf Azerbaijan State Telegraph Agency.
My question is to the representative on the State Department, Mr.
Melia. Since as you saw opposition usually refers to human rights
groups such as, for instance, Freedom House, I wanted to mention that
if you look at the report for 2013 Freedom in the World, Freedom House
identifies Azerbaijan as not free, while identifying Armenia and even
Nagorno-Karabakh, occupied Nagorno-Karabakh as partly free. My question
is that--I'm not even going to talk about Armenia, where people are
massacred even post-election, during post-election protests in 2008,
but if you look--my question's about Nagorno-Karabakh: How can a U.S.
government funded agency go into an internationally recognized
Azerbaijani territory under occupation, conduct a survey, and then
declare it as--as partly free? Isn't it an invitation for other
countries to follow the suit, invade another country, occupy a large
chunk of territory, and then, you know, remove the 600,000 natives from
that land, and then open a few news agencies and, you know, declare
it--invite the Freedom House and such organizations----
Ms. Han. OK. I think we got it. Thank you. Thank you. OK, so we've
got three questions on the table. Mr. Melia, would you like to start
first, since we just had that question, and then we'll turn over to
you.
Mr. Melia. Freedom in the World is not funded by the U.S.
government. It's funded by private donations to Freedom House. Some
other publications that Freedom House does, like Nations in Transit, do
get some assistance from the U.S. government. And what we give them a
grant to do is to provide their own honest, independent assessment of
the state of political rights and civil liberties in countries around
the world. We don't exercise any editorial control over the way they
write the reports or the judgments they come to, the conclusions they
come to. So I'll redirect you to the editors and managers of Freedom
House to discuss their methodology.
Ms. Han. Mr. Seyidov.
Mr. Seyidov. Thank you for your questions. When we became a member
of the Council of Europe, in front of me appeared the list of so-called
political prisoners which consist 716 person. We released all, and then
after one month, one month, some agents from Azerbaijan presented to
the Council of Europe another list of 500 political prisoners.
We as a very young member of the Council of Europe released them
all. And then, after two weeks, appeared new list of political
prisoners with 400 or approximately 500 again. That's why, from this
point of view, Mr. Ramis Yunus, we do not have political prisons. We
have our obligations in front of the European Court of Human Rights and
any person who convicted in Azerbaijan who made any kind of crimes can
appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
I want to give you some very interesting fact. European Court of
Human Rights made some decisions concerning Azerbaijan, and all these
decisions have been implemented by Azerbaijani government. Despite of
the fact that some European countries, including very, very famous and
very influential, so-called old democracies, even today are not ready
to implement the decision of the European Court of Human Rights.
That's why when we are talking about so-called political prisoners
which used as a pressure to Azerbaijani policy, that's another story.
When we can see that some problematic issues had happened in
Azerbaijan, we're ready to investigate by ourselves. And we did it for
a long period of time. Together with representative of NGOs in
Azerbaijan, we had created special group in order to find solution of
these kind of arrests and this kind of attitudes. And what had
happened? Some international organizations appointed very famous just
now person, Mr. Strasser, as a rapporteur on political prisoners in
Azerbaijan and send us message, you are working in Azerbaijan by
yourself. That's not so fair. Some supervisor from the Council of
Europe should monitor you.
That's why, again, we are ready to do our best for human rights,
but we don't want to see human rights as a tool in order to push to
Azerbaijan to achieve some goals which some international organization
has concerning Azerbaijan.
Thank you.
Mr. Namazov. Rustam Ibragimbekov is citizen of Azerbaijan Republic
constantly living in the territory of Azerbaijan Republic, is a
chairman of the Cinematographers Union, is a chairman of Forum of
Intelligentsia of Azerbaijan. He's a founder and the chairman of Ibrus
Theater, a drama theater Azerbaijan. Each year, he attends tens of
events in Azerbaijan. And it's unfair to say that he's living outside
of Azerbaijan.
When we were selecting, voting for Rustam Ibragimbekov, there were
87 members of National Council in the hall, and out of 87 members, 86
voted for him and only one abstained, which shows that we made the
right decision in selecting him as unified single candidate.
Ms. Han. OK, thank you. We're going to take three more questions,
and that will draw our briefing to a close. So I'm going to call on
you, in the second row right there. If you could wait--in the pink
shirt--I'm sorry, purple shirt--whatever color that is. Mr. Mollazade,
did you--OK, and then Mr. Mollazade. OK. Thank you.
Questioner. OK. Good afternoon. I'm Professor Brenda Shaffer at
Georgetown University and my question I would like to offer to Mr.
Melia and to Dr. Carter. In this Cold War period, the Soviet Union and
the United States pursued a strategic competition between them through
arming different movements, the different national movements in the
Third World, different ideological movements, different religious
movements. We saw the results of this. It brought societies apart. It
created civil wars. It killed millions of people and destabilized
countries, and in the end, it even hurt the security of the United
States.
In the post-Soviet period, we see that the countries have actually
learned a new cheaper model and actually probably more efficient, which
is instead of arming different movements around the world, we're seeing
the strategic competitions taking place in the ballot box and in the
street and through protests. So we see, for instance, in the post-Arab
Spring Middle East it's not just about the people's will, but it's also
the will of Russia, the will of Iran, the will of foreign powers.
We see in the Caucasus in the past couple of years that not only is
U.S. aid active there, but Russia's version of aid, Iran's version of
aid. And even the list of political prisoners that Dr. Lanskoy
discussed, many of them are there because they're representatives of
the Iranian government, funded by the Iranian government, being used
for terrorist activities, and not just religious believers.
So I'd like to know what is the U.S. policy on helping states find
a balance between true democratic processes or misuse of the democratic
processes for the promotion of external forces. Again, in the Middle
East, but also specifically we're seeing this focus in the South
Caucasus, in Georgia, a Russian citizen elected for prime minister; in
Azerbaijan, a Russian citizen, a candidate--how to allow this not to be
an arena of external competition?
Ms. Han. And then, well, if you could like to add two--ask their
questions--
Questioner. Hello, my name is Rafiq from University of Delaware. I
have a really simply question to Azerbaijani official policymakers. I
wonder whether there will be any changes regarding the settlement, the
resolution of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia
after the presidential election. Do you expect any major changes, any
changes in your counterparts? Thank you very much.
Ms. Han. And then, right here in the front row.
Questioner. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank for your
commission for a very important hearing.
Ms. Han. Could you identify yourself?
Questioner. My question to representative of U.S. government--my
name is Asim Mollazade. I'm chairman of Democratic Reform Party of
Azerbaijan. My question is to Mr. Melia. Mr. Putin said that one of the
biggest tragedy of 20th century was collapse of Soviet Union. Now,
after idea of Eurasian Union, we have the active involvement of Russia
to political process of post-Soviet world elections in Latvia,
elections in Georgia, a lot of Russian citizens were elected there. As
a result, we had arrest of prime minister of Georgia, Ivane
Merabishvili, and the silence in the world about this fact when people
from Rose Revolution in jail. And also situations continue in
Azerbaijan, and Madam Shaffer said about the Hezbollah-type of
organization going to kill U.S. ambassador, Israel ambassador, leaders
of Jewish Azerbaijani community.
These people are in list of political prisoners, so called
discussing. I mean, can anybody accept Hezbollah activity or Russian
network activity financing in former Soviet territory? Is it a lack of
U.S. interest to this situation? What do you think about the
restoration of Soviet Union by Putin?
Ms. Han. I'll give you a moment to think about that. So let's start
with--Paul, did you want to comment first on the professor from
Georgetown?
Mr. Carter. Two versions of the same question actually.
Ms. Han. OK. Are you--OK, would you like to start. OK. Yeah, and
I'll give you--I'll call on you, yes.
Mr. Melia. Yeah, I was going to say that the two questions are
intertwined, the discussion about nationality and politics and external
influences in neighboring states and so on.
In my time in the U.S. government, which is brief but illuminating,
I have come to appreciate the limits of American and other governments'
ability to influence outcomes in other countries. And it reminds me of
a fundamental premise that I had learned working in the NGO world over
the previous 25 years, which is that the outcomes in foreign political
process will be determined by the people in those countries, and that
there will be--whether they move forward or backwards, whether they
have conflict or they have, you know, reconciliation, those are largely
decisions that will be taken by the people of each country. And
Azerbaijan, in this sense, is no different than any of the other
countries.
We as international actors play a supporting role. We can encourage
what we think are good decisions. We can try to discourage bad
decisions. We can demonstrate that we support the work of certain kinds
of actors like civil groups or journalist or government agencies. You
know, we work a lot with government agencies and we try to improve
their capacity to do their business better.
But we can't make them do their work better. We can't make them
more professional or more democratic or more transparent. That's not a
function of the assistance we provide. That's a function of decisions
that are taken by other people who live in other countries.
Now, I know there are other actors out there that are perhaps a tad
more malevolent than the United States generally is. But again, I would
not overstate the degree of international influence in these political
processes. I think the Russian role in Georgia has been vastly
overstated by some. I think, again, it's Georgians driving decisions in
Georgia and I think that that would be the case in Azerbaijan. It would
be the people and officials and the voters in Azerbaijan that will
ultimately decide the future of the country. But Dr. Carter is much
more of an expert on the nationalities of the former Soviet Union than
I am. So he can explain what's really going on.
Mr. Carter. Thank you very much, Tom. I guess my observation on
this would be that actually echoing what Tom had to say about the
influence of bigger powers on other countries. I mean, certainly
history shows that sooner or later it's the domestic situations in
these countries that win out. And you know, sometimes these big powers
can influence developments even for long periods of time, but then
eventually, it's the situations within the countries that prevail.
The United States, in many countries--we can't want democracy more
than the people of the countries with which we have a relationship. Our
assistance overseas, history and the record of our assistance shows
that--that where the people really want this, we can help them, but
where the people are not ready yet or have other ideas, things don't
work out.
We think that given the developments in Azerbaijan that things seem
to be going in a--at least popular opinion wants democracy. We believe
that. And we certainly would like to do everything we can to support
that. And that's one of the reasons that we had this hearing today, to
try to give a little bit of a support to that effort.
Ms. Han. OK. I'm going to turn next to the Ambassador and Mr.
Seyidov, are you going to address the Nagorno-Karabakh?
Mr. Seyidov. Yes.
Ms. Han. OK. And then what I'm going to do is I'll allow Mr.--
everyone to have one to two minutes to sort of wrap up their--any final
comments you'd like to make.
Mr. Seyidov.
Mr. Seyidov. Thank you very much, again. That's a very, very
essential question because today, Nagorno-Karabakh issue is the
question which we should discuss everywhere. And today, the pressure
which we can see to Azerbaijan because of our independent policy. We
did our best to be an independent and we're doing our best to be an
independent, but unfortunately not only we are able to see our
possibilities and our influence in the region, and that's why I think
Karabakh issue is the key point to show who is a master in the region.
Azerbaijan is in favor to find a solution, peaceful solution of
Nagorno-Karabakh issue and then several times mentioned that
unfortunately we faced with three Armenia, not with one. The one
Armenia is just nation which are living in a neighboring country. Poor
people, they are isolated because of the policy which provided by the
government Armenia. But the second Armenia living here, in United
States of America, in Los Angeles, that's a Diaspora, rich,
influential, standing there and maybe here and try to influence to
these briefings. And the third Armenia is existing, Armenia as a tool
in the hands of the big power to show he's a master in South Caucasian
region.
You said, my dear colleagues, that, you know, nation is responsible
for future and for democracy. Of course nation is responsible, but why
we have seen the same deja vu in Georgia, Russian citizen coming and
taking part in election; in Azerbaijan, Russian citizen is coming and
taking part, negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan deadlock.
United States of America is in favor to change status quo, but even you
are not able to change the situation.
That's why, despite of all this pressure, despite of all these
obstacles, the leadership of Azerbaijan is doing its best for finding
the solution of Nagorno-Karabakh--peaceful solution of Nagorno-
Karabakh. Because we have a lot of things to lose. We want to keep our
future. We want to do our best for our country. Thank you very much.
Ms. Han. Mr. Namazov.
Mr. Namazov. We observe today that pre-election situation in
Azerbaijan has already started, that there're steps taken towards
already with clear outcome towards the elections. Government is trying
to present National Council here in Washington as Russia's project. But
other member of Azeri government, like the chairman of president staff,
Mr. Ramsmetiev he travels to Moscow or Tehran, where he says that
National Council is a project of the West. And if they--the National
Council wins this election, Azerbaijan will be more integrated to
Europe, to West, to NATO. So as you see, that there's in the same
amount of time two different presentations of the National Council.
But I want to assure you that the decision of what will be the next
government will be decided not in Moscow, Tehran, or Washington, but by
the will of Azerbaijani people and they will be determined by voting in
October and then defending their laws to make the change.
Ms. Han. Mr. Ambassador, if you could spend two minutes wrapping
up.
Mr. Suleymanov. Yes. Thank you very much once again. And let me
raise one question right away. As someone who grew up in the Soviet
Union, I am quite used to the Soviet propaganda casually using words
like racism and I know it is irrelevant to the United States. So I grew
up living in an imperialist racist society here. If you look at the
propaganda efforts today against the United States, you would often see
the same thing.
I'm very saddened at what I heard here casual use of words
``false,'' ``planted,'' ``smearing.'' So for instance, when it is
someone in Azerbaijan, when it's written against somebody who you like,
it's a smearing campaign. If it's written about somebody in the
government, it's freedom of speech and can never be stopped.
So we need to be a little bit more grown up about this and
basically think about things which are realistic. I mean, I spent five
and a half years as consul general in Los Angeles. We saw yesterday
what happened in Los Angeles between police force and protesters. Now,
what should we--should we have a briefing at the parliament of
Azerbaijan and somebody coming and mentoring Ambassador Morningstar?
He's not a young man. I don't want him to suffer like that. So let us
get a little bit realistic here.
Another thing is, for instance and be a little bit careful in
casual using words. I mean, those words actually matter. And if we want
them to matter, then let's use them more carefully.
Another thing which surprised me here is that we have spent
discussing a potential candidacy of Mr. Ibragimbekov, who's a well-
known actor, but what are we discussing? It's a superficial--I'm not as
familiar as Mr. Namazov is with the Russian decision-making process. So
I don't know exactly what the Russians decide or what they don't
decide. I don't know. I don't know Russians that well.
But at the moment, the fact is obvious: Mr. Ibragimbekov has a
Russian passport. He said he wants to get rid of it. If he gets rid of
it by time and he's eligible to be registered, he will be registered by
law. If he's not eligible, he will not be eligible. So discussion of
this but--and using this discussion in order to attack the government
when the fact stands is actually kind of--just--I mean, it's kind of
strange, to be honest.
The other thing that I wanted to say is first of all, Mr. Gadirli,
I thank you for bringing up the words of Mr. Wilson, President Wilson.
I think every Azerbaijani in this room and beyond, we all share the
aspiration of Mr. Topchubashev, Fatali Khan Khoyski, and everybody else
who built Azerbaijan's republic. Every day, I can tell you that my
mission here defends the flag of the Republic of Azerbaijan because we
believe in the spirit of that flag.
Now, Mr. Gadirli, you know how much I respect you, but you also
know that the republic you referred to lived 23 months and no, Mr.
Melia, it did not fall because of domestic dissidents, it fell because
of the obvious foreign invasion. So please, while in a continent--the
great continent of North America surrounded oceans, it seems that
foreign intervention is a very remote possibility. In my country, it's
not the same.
Mr. Gadirli, I share your aspiration for democratic and independent
Azerbaijan. We do everything possible to make sure that happens. Let us
work together. Let us work together to make sure that the spirit which
instilled in that republic remains forever. Azerbaijan must be
independent. And let me tell you something. As much as you might
disagree with the government of Azerbaijan, it is because of the
leadership of Haydar Alyiev and Ilham Alyiev, the Republic of
Azerbaijan stands at the most independent, most sovereign, and in most
progressive republic of the former Soviet Union. So in fact, when you
blow down the words of Mr. Wilson, you know what we're trying to do is
to solidify that spirit.
Now, I will just make a very small reference to what you said. I
know that you basically believe in parliamentary system, and you're
entitled to your view. Based on that you offer a very narrow
interpretation of a referendum and a constitution. I disagree with your
view on that. I think that majority view in Azerbaijan is obvious and
majority view around the world supports the idea that amendment into
constitution enters into force for the moment it's adopted. So I think
there's no legal preclusion for the incumbent president to be elected.
Ms. Han. I'm sorry, but we're going to lose our room and I
apologize to cut you off. Mr. Melia if you could start, then we'll go
to Dr. Lanskoy and then Mr. Gadirli, you'll have the last word. Oh, I'm
sorry, and Paul.
Mr. Melia. I'll just conclude where we began by saying that
Azerbaijan is an important partner of the United States. It is our
policy that we want them to succeed as a sovereign, secure, and
prosperous country based on the shared democratic aspirations that we
have all committed to in joining the OSCE and the Council of Europe.
And everything we do and say is intended to contribute to the
consolidation of Azerbaijan's success as an independent nation.
I think in the context of these 90 days or so until the
presidential election comes, there are a handful of things that the
government of Azerbaijan could do tomorrow that would advance the
democratic process. We talked about the need to release Ilgar Mammadov.
I think it's entirely within the power of the government to register
the EMDS as a domestic election monitoring organization, to invite
ODIHR, the OSCE ODIHR to send their observers short- and long-term. To
permit ordinary political activity--let people come and go, have their
meetings, make their speeches, and get their messages out, and let the
people decide whether to vote for one candidate or the other.
We in the United States don't have any preferences for candidates
of parties. We focus on a process and the more transparent and fair the
process is, the more confident we are that Azerbaijan will move
forward.
Ms. Han. Dr. Lanskoy.
Ms. Lanskoy. Thank you. Let me say a couple of things. First, on
the whole question of kind of what do we look for in the election
period, one of the sort of basic issues is whether there's an
acceptance that there can be an opposition, and not just saying--not
just automatically painting the opposition as a projection of bad
foreign influence.
We see a lot of authoritarian governments that do that, that say
the opposition is not authentic. The opposition is somehow influenced
by others. We see this right now in Russia, where Putin is basically
saying this is--you know--those NGOs, they're foreign agents and
members of the opposition met with the Georgian parliamentarian this is
not an authentic opposition. It's a shame to see some of that happening
in Azerbaijan.
Ilgar Mammadov is well-known to us. He's not an agent of Russia.
He's not an agent of Iran. He's certainly a political prisoner. It is a
shame to hear that type of argument being used against people who are
totally pro-Western. The time that I've spent watching Azerbaijan
actually predates those back to when I was at the EU and I was
following Azerbaijan closely and publishing on it all the time. And you
could see how over these 20 years Azerbaijan has gone in the wrong
direction. It used to be roughly on parity with Georgia when it came to
things like NATO expansion. Azerbaijan and Georgia in the mid-'90s were
about in the same place as they--Azerbaijan was saying we really want
to be in NATO and was looking for a path in that direction.
Now, there's such a big difference. If you look at, again,
referring to Freedom House surveys, and those are based on extensive
research, Azerbaijan's scores are getting closer to Uzbekistan. It's
not getting closer to Georgia or closer to Europe. It's getting closer
to the Central Asians, and that's very unfortunate.
It's already been said. Azerbaijan has a very vibrant civil
society. And on that, I do agree with the representatives of the
government. There's really a great civil society. It is a very diverse
country. And there's no place that's more ready for democratic
government and I wish all the Azerbaijanis the best in the elections.
Ms. Han. Mr. Gadirli.
Mr. Gadirli. Thank you. I deliberately started my speech with a
quote from former President Wilson. He didn't say that he agreed or
disagreed with Azerbaijani delegation. The only thing he said that he
noticed that they were speaking the same language. Now, this is very
important. It's important because it reveals the fact how people
conceptualize the world, how they envision the future of their country,
how they understand their own existence, what mental map they have in
their own hand in the end.
So we have a very bright ambassador here in the U.S. It's not that
I'm paying the tribute to what he has just said to me----
Mr. Suleymanov. It looks that way.
Mr. Gadirli. There're bright people in the government, employed by
the government, who speak various languages, who built a personal
career and have self-esteem. That goes without saying. It's not that we
don't see that. The problem is and what I try to explain here is how
government communicates to its own people internally.
I have no illusion about foreign aid, especially in a democracy
building. And we're not here to complain or ask for something. But the
language the government uses to communicate to its own people is
extremely outdated, extremely outdated. The concepts they use, the
terminologies they employ, the phraseology they use actually. I mean,
one of the MPs whom I personally respect, is not a member of incumbent
party, but he's a bright lawyer himself, recently, relatively recently
said to the media that Ilgar Mammadov, I quote, ``is a last and
unsuccessful attempt by the West to have a color revolution in
Azerbaijan.'' End of quote.
I'm not getting into the fact statement of whether he's true or
not, but the language is quite indicative.
Now, we hear here and there in Azerbaijan, someone is Russian
agent. Someone is Iranian agent. Someone is Western agent. I'm really
fed up with this. We have to pay attention to the conduct, to the
process. We have to ensure that ideas become part of the process and
people are valued because of the things they say.
There's another thing that is overlooked, what is called
intellectual dependence. That's very different thing from the thing
that agency of change. If I studied, for example, German philosophy,
which greatly influenced myself, I can fairly enough say that I am
intellectually dependent on German philosophy. I didn't study Chinese
philosophy. I'm not intellectually dependent on what the greatest
Chinese civilization produced.
But the worldview I have is a Western. But now, what we see is the
government, again, communicating to its own people. I know that they
say a lot of nice and sometimes true things to the West. But the way
they communicate to its own people is very outdated and very Russian-
like, not in terms that the Russians instructs them, but in terms of
the system, the similarity in the system, the similarity in the
problems.
Look what the Russia--how Russia treats its NGO and how Azerbaijani
government treats the NGO. The same talks: agents, agents, agents,
foreign aid, grants, blah, blah. How Russia treats its parties, its
political parties and the political process, how Azerbaijani government
treats its political parties and process, and et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera.
Now, Professor Brenda Shaffer mentioned about the task upon the
Iranian influence, et cetera. This is another truth, by the way. A
growing Islam, for example. Yes, Islam grows in Azerbaijan, but partly
because it was oppressed during Soviet time. Now, it simply is reaching
its traditional level. I think it will catch some 30-35 percent of the
society. Yes, it's visible because the number of voters increased who
have some religious aspirations and for any politician, including the
incumbent party--and they do so, which is fair enough and it's
legitimate to--in public people's campaign--we have to address the
needs of the believers. That says, yes, Islam has become politically--
political factor. But not in the sense that Islam is becoming a
political factor in a way that any Islamic group can grab the power.
They have significant and very deep disagreements among themselves.
They have different intellectual dependencies. Some depend on Iran.
Some depend on Turkey. Some depend on Arab. There's no way they can
come to any agreement among themselves.
Let's stop these speculations and manipulations about Islam, about
Russia, about Iran without--with due account to the real geostrategical
threats. I agree with you, Mr. Ambassador, they are threats. They are
threats. They're existential threats. And they're not going to go
anywhere if the government changes. And we do share that concern. Also
about Karabakh. I don't know if there're Armenians here, no matter from
which part of the world they're from. But I also want our American
friends to know this. It's not just about Azerbaijan and Armenia.
We have to have a clear picture. The end of the '80s and the
beginning of '90s were two different trends. Armenians wanted Karabakh
at any price. Azerbaijanis wanted independence at any price. When you
want something at any price, you pay the highest price possible. What
we have, Azerbaijan got its independence, but lost a control over the
Karabakh and surrounding area. Armenia got control over Karabakh and
surrounding areas, but lost its independence.
I want to understand everyone here in this room, occupation is the
price Azerbaijan pays for its independence.
Mr. Gadirli. I want you to know that the reason I'm standing in
opposition about that is just the fact that we don't talk to each other
in our country--no, not you and myself. But is no talk in Azerbaijan. I
know that I can access you. And in fact, unlike Americans here, I have
a luxury to ignore your diplomatic status because for me you're first
of all my fellow compatriot. But because we don't have a talk, there is
no process. No one can misuse it or use it if there is no process.
Ms. Han. All right. Thank you. I'm going to call on Dr. Carter to
provide some concluding remarks and then we'll wrap it up.
Mr. Carter. OK. We've heard testimony from a distinguished group of
American and Azerbaijan officials, politicians, and experts. They've
offered diverse perspectives on the current political situation in
Azerbaijan and the prospects for a free and fair presidential election
this fall. We are grateful to each for agreeing to appear at this
briefing today.
I began my introductory remarks earlier by noting that the United
States is a friend of Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani people and that we
have many common interests with the government in Baku. These strong
ties have have been an important factor in our close cooperation over
the years and we would like to see our relationship become even
stronger. As we have heard today, Azerbaijan is indeed at a crossroads.
One path leads forward toward democracy and economic prosperity. The
other leads toward authoritarianism, corruption, and eventually,
economic stagnation and decline.
The presidential election this fall will be an important
opportunity for Azerbaijan to act on this choice. All candidates must
be allowed to move and campaign freely without fear of arrest or
harassment. Journalists must be free to cover and report on the
election and other stories without the threat of detention on trumped
up charges, physical assault, or the jamming of broadcasts.
NGOs, religious organizations, and other elements of civil society
must be allowed to operate without arbitrary bureaucratic or legal
impediments. And all of Azerbaijani society must be able to trust that
it is governed in a transparent and rule-based manner in the interests
of all and not in the interests of a small group.
These are obligations that Azerbaijan has undertaken as a member of
the United Nations, the OSCE, and other international organizations. It
has--excuse me--it is our sincere hope that Azerbaijan will see this
opportunity, guarantee these basic democratic and human rights, and
take its rightful place as a regional cornerstone of democracy, social
peace, and prosperity.
Thank you again to all of our panelists and to all of you who have
attended this briefing today.
Ms. Han. Thank you very much.
[all]
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