In Germany, in the town of Esslingen am Neckar, on May 2, a discussion was held on ways to support the democratic forces of the countries of Western Europe, the institutions of civil society in authoritarian countries, and of showing solidarity with the international democratic community struggling against dictatorial regimes.
The discussions were confined to the annual award ceremony for human rights to activists named after Theodore Hacker. This year the prize was awarded to the director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy in Azerbaijan Leila Yunus.
Opening the debate, the Mayor of Esslingen am Neckar said the appointment of the international award named after Theodore Hacker supports fighters with dictatorships around the world. The name of Theodore Hacker, who had a courageous resistance to Hitler's Nazism, was immortalized in his home institution of the award, which is awarded since 1995 to people fighting for the ideals of democracy and humanism. Among the winners were the representatives of Belarus, Turkey, Algeria, Mexico, Rwanda, Russia, and Iran.
The mechanism for selecting the winner is as follows: Mayor urges citizens to submit proposals on the names of candidates to the Department of Culture of the city authorities. At the second stage, the cultural department collects detailed information about each of the candidates and forwards all materials to the Board of Deputies of the city. They select the worthiest ones and re-direct them to the Department of Culture with a request to collect additional information. Finally, at the final stage, all the collected materials are sent back to the Board of Deputies, where a final vote is held and the name of the winner is called. The entire selection process takes 1.5 years.
Yunus, the laureate in 2013, thanked them for the high honor and regarded the award as support to civil society in Azerbaijan by the international democratic community.
The awards ceremony will take place on May 5. On the same day, Yunus will present a report on the situation in Azerbaijan is a presidential election year in the political forum, moderated by Georg Restle, ARD commentator and the journalist Suzanne Stiefel. The discussion will also be attended by guests from Azerbaijan: Hikmet Hajizadeh, Arif Yunusov, Mehman Aliyev, Fuad Agayev, Azad Isazadeh and Matanat Azizova, the press office of Institute of Peace and Democracy reported. -0 -
Politics
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Armenia is not against the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, but does not consider it appropriate to discuss this issue now. "In the context of peace, we consider it possible to make a decision on the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group. When peace is an established fact, the existence of such a format may raise questions," Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a press conference today. "The whole question is about the timing, we need to understand how effectively and correctly to turn such topics into a subject of discussion right now," the Armenian Prime Minister added.
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He expressed his willingness to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the border between the two countries. "A meeting with Ilham Aliyev could take place at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. I am open to such a format," Pashinyan said at a press conference today. According to Pashinyan, Armenia recently presented another proposal for a peace treaty to Azerbaijan.
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On August 31, Azerbaijan observes a "day of silence" before the Sunday’s early parliamentary elections for the unicameral Milli Majlis. All electoral campaigning is prohibited 24 hours before the voting. The early elections were initiated by the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party. This decision was motivated by the overlap of the scheduled elections in November with the global UN forum - the COP20 climate conference taking place in Baku.
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On August 30, at approximately 22:55, the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant in Metsamor was disconnected from the country's power grid, as reported by the Armenian Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure. The shutdown was caused by a lightning strike, which triggered the plant's safety systems to switch the station to a safe shutdown mode. Currently, the plant's staff is working on restarting the facility.
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