German Ambassador to Azerbaijan gives answer to Eynulla Fatullayev

In reply to accusations by Mr. Eynulla Fatullayev at a press conference on 29 January, the German Ambassador on 31 January sent a letter to Mr. Fatullayev with the following messages:

“Dear Mr. Fatullayev, it is regrettable that my invitation from 16 January to discuss your conference on Germany remains unanswered until today. Instead you chose to raise a number of accusations against the Embassy and the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press conference on 29 January. As these accusations have been made publicly and as they are untrue you do not leave me any other option than refuting them publicly as well.

• Amnesty International does not receive institutional support from the German

Federal government.

• At no time did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs influence Amnesty International, the Black Sea Trust or the Open Society Institute to terminate their cooperation with you or instigated invited speakers to not appear at the conference.

• Neither has the German Embassy in Baku exerted any influence on participants, speakers and alleged sponsors of your conference. When it was clear that your claim of sponsorship by the Black Sea Trust was a lie, this information was, of course, provided to anybody inquiring about the conference.

• When the Embassy learnt that Germany was the focus of the conference we only

asked you for additional information beforehand like the concept and the list of speakers. As we cooperated trustfully in the past (for example our Foreign Ministry supported your project for improving prison conditions in Azerbaijan) I do think that such request was legitimate. When you informed us about your conference hypothesis that Germany/Europe were losing the right to criticize human rights violations in Azerbaijan, as they themselves had problems, we simply took note.

From the very beginning we were never concerned about the conference as such, because German media cover problems in Germany on a daily basis and – in difference from state controlled Azerbaijani media – in a manner openly critical of the government. We did, however, notice that you adopted the custom of minimizing problems here by exaggerating them elsewhere. Equally, the timing of your conference raised our eyebrows: it took place, “accidentally” in the same week in which two relevant resolutions on Azerbaijan were debated in PACE.

The German federal government is clearly committed to the freedom of opinion and truly appreciates the work of serious human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Freedom House or Human Rights Watch even when they criticize it.”

*  The head of the NGO "For Human Rights" Eynulla Fatulalev accused the German Foreign Ministry and Amnesty International of an attempt to prevent an international conference organized by him  on 19 January in Brussels,  which presented the results of the  research by his  NGO human rights issues in Germany.

After the completion of monitoring the German government became worried and had started to put "pressure" on the speakers, who were to speak at the conference. Fatullayev also noted that the official Berlin concerned with criticism of Germany, began to demand the disclosure of sources of funding for the project.

Fatullayev said that he received from Amnesty International warning that if it a second time will be imprisoned, the organization will not defend him. "I spit on your democracy, I do not need this protection," said Fatullayev.  Then Fatullayev said he would demand an explanation from Chancellor Angela Merkel.

 Representative of the German Embassy Fredrik Hanke , who attended the press-conference noted the importance attached to freedom of expression of Germany. He said that the German government does not create problems to  Fatullayev. -04D-