Azerbaijan Must Refuse Reservations in Dagestan

Presidents of Azerbaijan and Russia Ilham Aliyev and Vladimir Putin discussed on June 18 the situation on the border, where the day before unrest broke out from Azerbaijanis who can’t return to their homeland due to opposition from the Azerbaijani authorities.

This is the second telephone conversation between Aliyev and Putin. Exactly a month ago, on May 18, they were already discussing the situation and agreed to take measures to relieve tension. However, tensions continued to grow and resulted in a bloody clash. Although Moscow focuses on wounded police officers, video frames are full of Azerbaijanis who were beaten half to death.

The first signals about problems with crossing the border began to come from April 5, when Azerbaijan closed the border with Russia. At that time, 400 citizens were already reported returning from Russia and stuck on the border.

From the Azerbaijani side there were also people who wanted to go to Russia, but no tent cities or field conditions of residence of Russian citizens were reported.

As the head of Dagestan Vasiliev reported on May 18, it was planned to let 450 Azerbaijanis pass from Russia every two weeks. However, no more than 120 people passed per week, and the congestion was growing. Most of these people lived in inhuman conditions, hoping only for the help of the local population and philanthropists.

However, the question is not in what conditions people are waiting to cross the border, but why they are there. This is not a border issue. The reality is that the Azerbaijani state has turned its back on them and left them to their fate. The government ban on the entry of its citizens into the country was an erroneous, immoral, and ultimately unproductive decision.

The government should abandon this policy and open the border for its citizens, no matter what state they enter Azerbaijan from. It is on the territory of the historical homeland that the arriving people should be in specially designated places with quarantine measures. And after a full examination, doctors must make decisions about treatment for patients, and send healthy people further home.

The state has enough means and forces to organize such a practice. Shameful reservations in Dagestan should be eliminated. The question is not the image. The question is morality and political adequacy.

Further maintenance of such a status quo is unacceptable and must be stopped. We have not heard of such cases on the borders of other neighboring states and Azerbaijan should not remain a bad example of relations between the state and the citizen.