My personal blog, my thoughts.
I present to your attention the article by Sergei Markedonov, an associate professor of the Chair of Foreign Region Studies and Foreign Policy of the Russian State Humanitarian University.
The Sumgait tragedy, which occurred 30 years ago, became one of the bloodiest events in the history of the Armenian-Azerbaijani confrontation. It made the “divorce” of the two peoples uncontested.
Read more “30th anniversary of Sumgait pogroms: black spots of Azerbaijan”
Azerbaijani human rights activist and historian Arif Yunusov, who now resides in the Netherlands as a political immigrant, recently gave an interview to an Azerbaijani online TV channel “Obyektiv TV”. Yunusov stated that Armenian pogroms in January 1990, as well as Black January had been carried out by the order of Heydar Aliyev, who sought to come to power in Azerbaijan.
Read more “Massacres in Baku in 1990 were Organized by Heydar Aliyev”
BAKU, Azerbaijan (A.W.)—Armenian authorities have harshly criticized Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s address to the sixth congress of his New Azerbaijan (Yeni Azerbayacan) party on Thursday, calling his remarks racist.
A prominent lawyer spoke openly about the beating of his client while in custody, perhaps thinking that it could stir change in Azerbaijan.
Action was taken in the authoritarian country, but not against the police suspected of carrying out the beating. Instead, it is the whistle-blowing lawyer who finds himself being punished.
Shortly after speaking out, Yalcin Imanov, who has defended a number of government critics, was suspended by the Azerbaijani Bar Association. He awaits a final decision this month on whether he will be formally disbarred.
Read more “Risky Business: Defending Azerbaijan’s Opposition”
The head of Azerbaijan’s opposition National Council of Democratic Forces says the coalition will boycott an early presidential election that has been scheduled for April 11 under a decree by President Ilham Aliyev.
Opposition leader Camil Hasanli announced the coalition’s boycott plans in an interview with Reuters on February 6, a day after Aliyev’s website published the decree bringing forward the date of the election.
The vote previously had been scheduled for October 17.
Read more “Azerbaijani Opposition Coalition To Boycott Early Presidential Election”
2018 is an election year in Azerbaijan. The authorities may have the streets on lockdown, but the fight against dissent in cyberspace is just beginning.
Last week, somebody broke into MeydanTV’s Facebook. By Monday, the Berlin-based online news platform finally restored its access to the page — but had lost years of posts and nearly 100,000 subscribers (the publication had experienced a series of DDoS attacks on its site earlier in January). Anybody who knows the parlous state of freedom of speech in Azerbaijan knows of MeydanTV. The site’s independent journalism has won it no friends in the South Caucasus state, where its journalists are routinely harassed.
In late December, a group of men from a nationalist organization broke into a high school in Baku and accosted a teacher, who had become a social media sensation for posting a photo of one of his students dressed in traditional Armenian attire.
Read more “Azerbaijani Teacher Fired After Call for Peace with Armenia”
Two French journalists accused by Azerbaijan’s government of defamation for calling the country a “dictatorship” appeared for a hearing at a French court Tuesday, in an unusual case that activists call an effort to export censorship, AP reported.
Read more “French journalists in court accused of defaming Azerbaijan”
The logic of posing the question of the need to abolish “Azerbaijan” is simple. The doctor does not require a person with cancer to tolerate a tumor that will take him to the grave if the ailment is left without attention. Preservation of the tumor (let us recall the appeals of peacekeepers to rescue the “face” of the nosed sultan), threatening to grow metastases, will destroy the patient. Therefore, in case the disease is started, resort to aggressive therapy, forgetting about the torturous procedures for the patient – the tumor is cut out, burned and irradiated to save his life.
Read more “Azerbaijan – a Turkish tumor on the body of the region”
As Meydan.tv reports : Yunusov Family Safe From Interpol Extradition to Azerbaijan
Interpol will not arrest and deport Leyla Yunusova and her husband, Arif Yunusov, to Azerbaijan, Yunusov wrote on his Facebook page.
“The Azerbaijani authorities’ request for our arrest and forced deportation will be rejected. Thus, the question of our compulsory return with the help of Interpol is closed. But we are not going to finish our fight with this”, the Facebook statement reads.
Read more “Yunusov Family Safe From Interpol Extradition to Azerbaijan”