Three members of the OSCE monitoring mission declare that the elections are not democratic and injustice

«We cannot call these elections are fair and democratic," reads a  separate statement  by the three members of the PACE monitoring mission, the German deputies: Frank Schwabe,  Ute Finckh-Kraemer and Irish MP Michael McNamara. A joint statement of the Deputies transmitted to Turan agency said that "in spite of the material and technical base, these elections were not accompanied by political freedom, freedom of speech and press, assembly and association, and therefore cannot be considered democratic."  The statement noted the poor state of human rights in the country,  government pressure on civil society, NGOs dealing with human rights, the illegal arrests of known human rights defenders Leyla and Arif Yunus,  Intigam Aliyev, Rasul Jafarov, and others.

"The suppression of freedom of speech and of the press for a long time is a concern of the local and international community, but now the trend of harassment of journalists and arrests on trumped up charges has intensified,"  reads  the statement. The  members of the PACE observation mission expressed regret that the government did not create the conditions for the presence of the election monitoring group of the OSCE/ODIHR.

"We did not come to Azerbaijan  to give lessons to the people of Azerbaijan or its government. We arrived not behind this. However, with regard to the conclusions of the PACE observation mission, it is important to keep in mind that it visited an extremely small number of polling stations of the country. It is not enough to draw conclusions about the quality of the elections. Thus, the mission of the PACE watched less than 0.5% of the vote counting only  in one of the 125 electoral commissions. It is not enough to draw conclusions on the situation in the country. But even in these polling stations were visible clear violations.

"Finally, we would like to remind you that the principles of election monitoring by the PACE concluded that the elections  is not a one-time event, but a continuous process involving several stages, each of which must be analyzed to give estimation." -16 / D03-