Azernews.Az

The report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom published last week, has been analysed by the Azerbaijani State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations, the committee's head Elshad Iskandarov told Trend news agency, commenting on the provisions of this document concerning Azerbaijan.

According to the chairman of the committee, the named organisation is not a public entity, but a non-governmental body that prepares recommendatory documents for U.S. government agencies.

"The leaders of the organisation are lobbyists for various religious communities. Therefore, these reports do not reflect the interests of the American state, but the interests of persons supporting various religious structures," Iskandarov said.

The State Committee head believes mistakes in the report are traced in three directions.

"In the first place, double standards are clearly visible. On the other hand, a number of facts related to Azerbaijan are either distorted, or do not take into account the reality of the country. A subjective assessment is very obvious in this regard. Finally, the report itself is biased. It can therefore be seen as a document prepared in accordance with double standards and on the basis of incorrect facts and bias," Iskandarov said.

"If we look at the geography covered in the report, we see double standards. For example, none of the European countries in which there are numerous problems with the construction of minarets, sounding the azan, where there are facts showing the killing of Muslims by neo-Nazis and numerous protests related to hijab, was included in the report," he said.

According to him, the report does not contain a single word about the problems faced by Muslim communities in these countries.

"The report mainly contains information about the Islamic and Eastern countries which are in the sphere of interests of international missionary organisations which turned into transnational corporations. And that is another manifestation of double standards," the head of the committee said.

"Moreover, a special section of the report notes that Azerbaijan exerts pressure on those who do not do military service on religious grounds. Of course, the authors of the report do not care how dangerous these evasions are for the National Security of Azerbaijan, 20 per cent of whose territory is occupied. But there is not a word about the occupying country, Armenia," Isgandarov said.

"For example, in Armenia a lot of members of the religious sect Jehovah's Witnesses were arrested for refusing to serve in the Armenian occupation army, but Armenia is not the object of this report at all.

"On the contrary, the decision of the European Court related to Armenia was placed in the part of the report concerning Azerbaijan. It is called laying the blame on someone else's doorstep," Isgandarov said.