Baku criticizes EU double standards
By Aynur Karimova
Baku has once again criticized the European Union's biased position and double standards pursued toward Azerbaijan.
Novruz Mammadov, the deputy head of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration and chief of the administration’s foreign relations department, wrote on his official Twitter page on October 23 that one aspect of the EU’s policy on Azerbaijan stands as a telling indicator of the EU’s double standards.
He was commenting on the illegal visit of Swiss citizen Vartan Sirmakes, a co-founder and CEO of Franck Muller Group, to the occupied Zangilan region of Azerbaijan, where he took part in an opening ceremony of the gold mine in Veyneli village without Azerbaijan's permission.
“How it is that Switzerland and EU fail to prevent their companies and representatives from operating in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh?” he said. “Whereas they are not present in South Ossetia, Abkhazia or elsewhere."
The Azerbaijani Prosecutor General's Office has already appealed to the Swiss Prosecutor General's Office to criminally prosecute Sirmakes.
This is not the first case when foreign companies have been engaged in illegal economic activity in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan to propagandize the illegal regime in these areas at the international level and call into question the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan.
On October 19, Azerbaijan’s Economy and Industry Ministry prevented the release of business guides by Grant Thornton International, a U.S. company engaged in audit and consulting services. The business guides were meant to propagandize economic activity in the Armenia-occupied Azerbaijani lands.
Under Azerbaijan’s national laws, any illegal activity in the occupied lands of Azerbaijan can be cause for a prosecution. Also, unauthorized visits to Nagorno-Karabakh and other occupied regions of Azerbaijan are considered illegal and individuals who pay such visits are included in Azerbaijani foreign ministry’s “black list.”
The “black list” of foreign citizens who illegally visited territories under Armenian occupation included 501 people from 49 countries, according to the research conducted by the dailykarabakh website.
Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions of Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly one million were displaced as a result of the war.
Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994, but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal.
Peace talks mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. have produced no results so far.
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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova
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