NGOs outside the law?

Foreign donors finance the civil sector in Azerbaijan to organize a color revolution. Behind this  are hostile circles and pro-Armenian forces. However, these attempts will be prevented  and Azerbaijan does not need foreign donors, now we ourselves help others.  These were the main points of  the  head of state before a group of young people in Beylagan last week.

Just  after  that  speech, the Head of the Presidential Administration, Ramiz Mehdiyev, met with  editors  of pro-government media, where he repeated the allegations against the opposition and NGOs. So, the authorities  are convinced  that today civil sector is a real threat to the authorities, and it must be destroyed.

  However, even in this case, they are inconsistent and illogical, because all NGOs operate within the law, which the authorities tighten periodically.  The country has a law on grants, and many other acts in the framework of  which works  the civilian sector. Therefore, attempts to present it all as  subversive activities of hostile forces, seems ridiculous.

 The authorities are  angry that, despite their attempts, independent NGOs continue to exist and operate -  they protect the rights of citizens, inform the international community, puts demands before the authorities and indicate their mistakes. But they act on the basis of current legislation of Azerbaijan, and the actions of the civil sector are absolutely legal.

If we analyze  speeches of Aliyev  and Mehdiyev  in Beylagan before the   editors, then the cause of their irritability is   clea - the availability of alternative views of data that expose power. But can it be regarded as a hostile activities or order for money from  external enemies?

 To prevent  is the authorities have chosen a simple way - to introduce self-censorship. Calls and threats  by Mehdiyeva prove  this. He openly threatened "unpatriotic" media and those who dare to continue to act against the state. Power is implied under statehood implied power.

It is difficult to  imagine  that in a democratic country  there is an open threat, and media is ordered  to write and say what the power wants; and  these threats came from the second person in the state, who undertakes  the functions of the censor ...

According to the logic of the authorities it turns out that if a soldier or government official commits treason, then it is unpatriotic  to  write about it. So , it comes out that  those who commit lawlessness, let continue. At the time, the press has written much about corruption  of Rasul Guliyev, Ali Insanov,  and Farhad Aliyev. Then the  authorities also accused the authors of such publications of non-patriotism....

In his speech in Beylagan there was one more important point: it was stated openly stated that all bank transfers are  under control, and it is well known who and how much money receives. It seems that the talk is about  any illegal networks of illegal activity.

In this sense, I would like to remind the grant of more than  $2 million from American donor USAID Lawyers Confederation, which is headed by Ali Huseynov - head of the parliamentary committee on legislation.

Huge amounts of  money from  foreign donors for many years received and still receive a lot of  government agencies of Azerbaijan; and no one was accused  them of working for the enemy. These amounts total hundreds of millions of dollars over two decades.

So the question is not  the money. When they are given to  "their own  people", donors are good. If money are to people thinking other way,  not like power wants,  then it's bad.

Such an approach demonstrates i failure of attempts to sit on two chairs. It is necessary either to  prohibit by law to have  own opinion, as it was in the Soviet Union, and to admit that there is no  democracy,  or respect  own Constitution and international obligations.

And the last. Someone, who will not say who it is,  is not  confident that he could behave in this way indefinitely.

A Western expert said once that  when authoritarian rulers stop to hear alternative views, they begin to truly believe that their opinion is the only right. Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad and others  though so....