Azernews.Az

A member of the Azerbaijani delegation to the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly has sent a letter to Norway’s Ambassador to Azerbaijan Erling Skjonsberg over what he termed as Norway’s supporting "a politically inspired" event due in Baku November 4.

Elkhan Suleymanov, chairman of the Azerbaijani delegation to the Euronest PA, said in the letter that reports posted on several local websites say that through Skjonsberg’s office, Norway is officially organizing, or at least actively supporting, the event.

"Personally I deeply regret these news," Suleymanov wrote. "The NGO For the sake of Human Rights is organizing that day a conference, ‘To assess and to ask the release of political prisoners on the basis of UN and CE criteria’. For more than two years the Azerbaijani delegation to the Council of Europe has been asking to start within PACE an open and transparent debate on those criteria, but unfortunately without success. Some NGOs, together with Azerbaijani opposition parties, by all means want to avoid this debate and appeal to foreign countries and their ambassadors to give them support, instead of having this open debate."

Suleymanov said that it is quite surprising and disappointing that Norway is supporting this point of view.

The letter says that Azerbaijan was the one and only singled out country in the CE to be the subject of a fact-finding report on the issue. Fortunately, most recently, the PACE institutions finally accepted that this issue might concern not only Azerbaijan, but definitely is affecting several CE member countries. Thus, the title of the report was recently changed into "Revisiting the issue of political prisoners". Also, a decision was taken to include the debate on the definition and the criteria, Suleymanov said in the letter.

Suleymanov wrote that all member states of CE being treated in the same way encourages confidence.

"This new approach will allow the PACE to deal with this delicate item in the future in a fully comprehensive and impartial way, as the report will be inclusive for all 47 member states, as the same fact-finding missions will be organized in all countries concerned…In the first approach, it will be interesting to learn from the Rapporteur, Mr. Straesser of Germany, to which criteria he wants to examine the alleged presence of political prisoners in all those member countries, and which document he would like to use as a framework reference. We are aware that the secretariat of PACE's legal affairs committee, in an attempt to also avoid the debate, prefers to refer to some vague 1991 criteria that were defined by the United Nations in the case of Namibia."

The letter noted that the notion of "political prisoners" was worked out in 1989-1990 by Professor Karl Aage Nergard, when he visited Namibia in the mission of the United Nations, and the notion was used on the basis of "Nergard principles".

"I should stress that "Nergard principles" were not and could not be confirmed as a universal document, which could be applied to all member countries, either during their use in the Namibia case or then by any UN authority. However, as you know, these criteria have never been discussed or approved at PACE's plenary session. Moreover, today these criteria are more than 20 years old."

The Azerbaijani MP wrote that at the time, even the notion "terrorist" was not introduced in international law, and the mentioned criteria were focusing only on how the United Nations was to deal with the particular situation of that southern African state at that time.

"For this reason, I do not understand what the organizers of the November 4 event in Baku mean with "on the basis of the UN and CE criteria", as these criteria do not exist," Suleymanov said.

"I do regret that your country, which has such a long democratic tradition, is giving - through your office of Ambassador - support to this initiative of an NGO that wants to compose lists with names of alleged political prisoners, without disposing of any recognized standards or criteria."

The letter added that the event aims to "damage our country" under the guise of the political prisoner issue for the sake of "private political aims".