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By Trend

The pot calling the kettle black...if we apply this to the representatives of some international NGOs, one can easily determine the main kind of their activity. Something these defenders of democracy scream about all over the world is something they find worthy of doing themselves.

For example, Robert Menard has been holding the post of the secretary general of the Reporters Without Borders organization. At present, he is the mayor of the southern city of Beziers, France. Menard was strongly criticized after answering the questions of the Mots Croisées (Crossword) program presenter. Menard in particular said that upon his order the statistics on Muslim children are gathered, and according to those statistics, some 64 percent of school students in Beziers practice Islam. That is "too much", according to Menard.

It should be stressed that Menard has Nazi inclinations. He was elected mayor of the city from the French far-right nationalist party "National Front". It is not accidental that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called the party "fascist" in October 2014.

France-2 TV channel called Menard a "provocateur without borders".

"While passing from the right camp to the left one, this provocateur is engaged in various provocations," said the TV channel episode (http://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-magazine/france-2/complement-d-enquete/video-robert-menard-provocateur-sans-frontieres_958083.html).

It should be noted that Robert Menard is not for the first time having problems with the law. A few years ago, as the French media reported, Menard, being the head of the Reporters Without Borders, confessed that the RWB’s budget is replenished mainly with help of the “American organizations closely related to the US foreign policy.”

Among those organizations standing behind the RWB there are the Open Society Foundation of the billionaire George Soros, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The RWB’s complete unwillingness to notice the problems with freedom of speech, “where it is not necessary”, may have another, more prosaic explanation. This human rights organization, on a par with such structures as the Freedom House, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, indirectly exists with help of the funds allocated by the US Department of State.

An article by John Cherian in the Indian magazine Frontline said that RWB “is reputed to have strong links with Western intelligence agencies” and “Cuba has accused Robert Menard, the head of the group, of having links with the CIA”.

The organization, formally meant to defend the freedom of expression, has become a conventional weapon of information and psychological war, and the implementation of Washington’s political plans.

This organization systematically and regularly criticizes the Azerbaijani government, accusing it of violating the freedom of speech and expression, despite of the fact that Robert Menard was received by the country’s President Ilham Aliyev in 2006.

The Reporters Without Borders included the names of 12 allegedly arrested Azerbaijani journalists in its 2014 report in order to present Azerbaijan alongside with China and Iran as a country where the freedom of speech is suppressed. Apparently, the fascist and Islamophobic heritage of Menard are still the basic principles of this organization.

The combination of these principles with the interests of certain circles in the US makes the statements of this organization very biased, and sometimes even disgusting.

Another example of the Islamophobic position of this organization can be seen in its attitude towards Turkey.

In the index of the Reporters Without Borders, Turkey ranked 154th among 180 countries. Despite the subsequent changes, the country’s rating hasn’t changed since 2012.

Some legislative packages approved by the government and decrease in the number of the arrested journalists were not taken into account when determining the country’s rating in 2014. Accordingly, “no progress” was indicated.

On one hand, it deprives the country of incentive to work hard to improve its ranking in international indexes, and also creates a wrong impression about the real state of things.

In addition, the RWB arranged yet another provocation in 2002 against Turkey and called the then Chief of the General Staff Huseyin Kivrikoglu a “predator of the media” and put up his huge portrait on the ground of a railway station in Paris.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey stepped in indicating that Robert Menard’s appearance in the country is undesirable. The Turkish Interior Ministry said that “all air, water and land routes to Turkey are closed for Menard.”

But what’s most important is that such characters as Menard and organizations like Reporters Without Borders never try to deal with the problems right in front of them. For example, Huffington Post, influential US newspaper some time ago wrote that Menard is “thoroughly corrupt” and “the press freedom index published annually by RWB was compiled according to taste of specific sponsors for a certain fee.”

Ironically, such corrupt, racist individuals and organizations that have gone far in the most sensational scandals, are trying to establish a rating of Azerbaijan and show it as an example of “non-democracy”.

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