Freedom House responds to Baku"s claims

The US-based rights watchdog Freedom House on Wednesday responded to Baku's accusation's over latest "Freedom in the world" report, as well as a recently published audio conversation that blames the global organization in attempting to "overthrow power" in Azerbaijan.

In an interview with TURAN's Washington, DC correspondent, Freedom House's vice-president for research ArchPuddington said, Azerbaijan had a history of responding to the group's global reports improper way -- instead of a discussion with it, by attacking "either politically and unfair, very unconvincing way, or by spamming it".

Q. Recently an Azeri media published the audiotape of a conversation of Turan News Agency Director MehmanAliyev with an alleged Freedom House employee Yevgeni, who phoned from Ukraine, saying they were ready for a "change" in Azerbaijan. The conversation happened in December but emerged on the Internet only last week, at the time when "Freedom in the world" report was announced, putting Azerbaijan among countries that experienced "serious setbacks" in political rights and civil liberties during 2013.

Does Freedom House have anything to do with the phone call, or a person named Yevgeni in Ukraine?

A. No, Absolutely no: There is no Yevgeni works for the Freedom House. We don't have anyone by that name, or title. We would certainly not have anyone calling to Azerbaijan telling to an official that we were ready to target Azerbaijan. It is a juvenile concoction of the authorities in Azerbaijan, quite frankly.

No country in the world responds to our reports in the aggressive and underhanded way that the Azeri government responded in the past, including spam attacks on Freedom House.

So this doesn't surprise me, because Azerbaijan has a history of responding to our reports instead of a discussion with us, by attacking us either politically and unfair, very unconvincing way, or by spamming us.

Q. Why does the Azeri government respond that way to Freedom House, why specifically Freedom House?

A. That's a good question, because we are certainly not the only organization that does assessment of democracy and human rights that has been very critical of Azerbaijan. So maybe the Azeri government has been treating the other organizations similarly, I really don't know.

They clearly are unhappy with our scores and our reports, and they somehow think that having these reports in the press that are clearly not true and campaigns on the Internet against us is going to have somehow an influence on our analysis, but it's not to influence us.

Q. Baku officials blame Freedom House in reporting "biased and subjective judgments" regarding the country's human rights index. Most recently, the President's adviser Ali Hasanov told local media that Freedom House has been trying to "purposefully pressure" Azeri government and this is why he invites the organization to "step on the right way".

A. Azerbaijan is not the only government that is unhappy with our scores and it is not the only government that calls us bias. I should note, if you look back historically between 1995, 1998, 2000, we gave Azerbaijan much better scores than Azerbaijan gets today. So we weren't bias against Azerbaijan in the year 2000, when we ranked Azerbaijan as a partly free country, and we had some expectations that adherence to human rights standards might improve there. Especially under IlhamAliyev conditions have just simply worsened in the past decade. I don't know what that is. I know Azerbaijan has energy resources, and I think Azerbaijan diplomatically gets special treatment because it is an energy giant. In that regard our scores have less impact on Azerbaijan than they might have on countries that don't have energy resources.

But I think the leadership in Azerbaijan clearly would like the country to be recognized as something of a, if not a great power, at least a respected member of international diplomatic and economic system. And our scores are I guess embarrassing in that regard.

Q. Before the October election there were some concerns regarding a major crackdown on fundamental freedoms following the mass protests in Baku and the regions. Meantime there were some hopes that the situation will change for the better after the election; would you say it happened or on the contrary?

A. I'd say thus far we've seen no improvement. But now again we are in a new year, and the conditions, if they will improve, will be in our score for the year.

Q. In its term, the Azeri Foreign Ministry objected to the inclusion of Nagorno-Karabakh in the list of "partly free" countries by the Freedom House: 

A. There are two issues here. One is that we give Nagorno-Karabakh a separate score. We have explained this to the Azeri officials and Azeri media on numerous occasions, but I'm happy to explain it again.

We give separate scores to a number of territories that are not recognized as sovereign countries, such as West bank, Gaza, Palestine, the Western Sahara, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transdnestria, Tibet and others as well. The point is that we aren't singling out the Nagorno-Karabakh and we aren't trying to punish Azerbaijan. We don't have a pro-Armenian bias, and anti-Azeri bias. We give a score to Nagorno-Karabakh because it is a disputed territory. It is a territory, whose status is unclear right now, but it's not controlled by Azerbaijan, and it's not controlled by Armenia right now.

Our analysts felt conditions in Nagorno-Karabakh were such that it merited a "partly-free" score, and that's what we gave it.