Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin

Sunday, December 7, 2014

The Two Faces of Azerbaijan’s Government

Azerbaijan's leaders like to pretend that they’re friends of the West. Time for a reality check.     

By Altay Goyushov
a faculty member at Baku State University (Azerbaijan) and currently Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.    

Foreign Policy - December 6, 2014

Azerbaijan’s most famous investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova is the latest in a long list of Azerbaijani activists to become political prisoners. Ismayilova, a journalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has just been sentenced to two months of administrative detention on charges of driving a fellow reporter to attempt suicide, following, an accusation that observers called “ridiculous.” Ismayilova, a long-term critic of the government who has published numerous reports about official corruption, was denounced as a “traitor” by the head of the presidential administration Ramiz Mehdiyev in a lengthy anti-American treatise that appeared a day earlier.
The article denounces United States democracy assistance efforts as undermining foreign states, and refers to domestic civic organizations as a “fifth column.” Mehdiyev attacks Ismayilova by name, accusing her and her collaborators of devising “anti-Azerbaijan programs” that are “the equivalent of working for foreign security services.” In November, Ismayilova was prevented from participating in a Helsinki Commission hearing on corruption where she was supposed to testify, and earlier in the year she was accused of leaking information to U.S. intelligence officials following a meeting with U.S. Senate staffers.

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