U.S. Silent About Azerbaijan's Forthcoming Snap Elections
The United States this week refrained from offering any comment on Azerbaijan's forthcoming snap presidential elections which are scheduled to take place on February 7, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.
"I just don’t have any comment on the internal elections inside Azerbaijan," State Department's spokesperson Matthew Miller told a Thursday briefing when asked for the second time in a week.
"I just don’t have any comment on it," Miller pushed back when pressed by TURAN if the U.S. thought the elections, and concerns around it, weren't "significant enough".
The OSCE ODIHR Election Observation Mission on Wednesday released its interim report on Azerbaijan's upcoming elections saying that each of the participating candidates, along with the current president, have "openly supported the president in the recent past."
The report highlights that the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, freedom of the media, and the right to access information, however the restrictions are not sufficiently defined.
Politics
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The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (OPHRD), a joint program of the World Organization against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), has called for the urgent release of activist Rufat Safarov from prison in Azerbaijan. It has launched a campaign in support of the Azerbaijani human rights defender. https://www.omct.org/en/resources/urgent-interventions/arbitrary-detention-and-judicial-harassment-against-rufat-safarov
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This year, the laureate of the annual Nargiz Prize, awarded for efforts in the fight for democracy, was Akif Gurbanov, chairman of the board of the Resplatforma (Platform of the III Republic) movement, who is under arrest.
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The U.S. will prohibit the issuing of visas for nearly a dozen more individuals responsible for undermining democracy in Georgia, bringing the total number to over 100, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.
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The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has expressed condolences to the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, following the tragic incident in the city of Magdeburg. "We are deeply shocked by the news of the deaths and injuries resulting from the tragic incident that took place at the Christmas market in Magdeburg," the message reads.
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