Journalists in Baku deprived of opportunity to ask PACE co-reporters how much Azerbaijani authorities pay them for their loyalty
The director of Azerbaijani Institute for Peace and Democracy, Leyla Yunus believes that the co-reporters of PACE Monitoring Committee Pedro Agramunt and Josef Gresh are responsible for the increase of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, which took place in the same period when they conducted a monitoring of socio-political situation of the country.
As Azerbaijani news agency Turan reports, Yunus requested the journalists during the press conference to ask the co-reporters at which cost they sell their services and loyalty to the Azerbaijani authorities.
However, as Turan notes, the office of the Council of Europe in Baku canceled the press conference to be held at 6 p.m. on 23 of January on the results of the working visit of PACE co-reporters. The reasons for the cancellation of the press conference haven’t been reported.
“The journalists from independent and oppositional Media lost their opportunity to get the answers to the questions that popped up during the visit of co-reporters.” Turan writes.
It is stated in the article that the heads of opposition parties after the meeting with the co-reporters earlier declared that they would boycott further meetings with them.
Note that on Thursday during the press conference in Baku Yunus said that PACE co-reporter, Robert Strasser conducted a huge job on political prisoners of Azerbaijan but his report was voted down in the PACE session in January of 2013 by the Azerbaijani government lobbyists. At that time the country only had 84 political prisoners. The rejection of Strasser’s report gave a green light to new repressions, after which the number of political prisoners increased by 50.
The Azerbaijani human rights activist declared that the responsibility for this is on the shoulders of PACE Monitoring Committee co-reporter Pedro Agramunt, who during the discussion of Strasser’s report twice opposed it. Yunus accused Agramunt for cooperating with Azerbaijani authorities, calling on him and the other co-reporter Josef Gresh to resign. According to Yunus currently there are 135 prisoners of conscience and political prisoners in Azerbaijan.
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