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Belgium, which yesterday took the presidency in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, is facing a really hard problem. The veracity of the organization suffered because of the style of presidency of Azerbaijan which has the worst record of human right. That’s true the chairmanship passes in alphabetical order, but this doesn’t prove fact that such a totalitarian country presides the committee which fights for the human rights. Since the very beginning there were no big expectations from the presidency of Azerbaijan. The best to be expected was that this period will be a usual, common presidency. There were concerns, however, and those concerns proved to be realistic.

Since the very first day the Azerbaijani authorities demonstrated unprecedented pressures towards the civic society, the opposition, the lawyers, bloggers and representatives of press.

It was both strange and paradoxical, just after 3 weeks of presidency, on May 25, Anar Mamadly, the famous lawyer, Václav Havel prizewinner was arrested in Azerbaijan. In July Leyla and Arif Yunus were arrested. In August was arrested Rasul Jafarov. The latter was one of those who was cooperating with the Council of Europe and was informing the organization about the situation in Azerbaijan.

It’s wondering whether the Azerbaijani authorities couldn’t find a better time to silence there oppositionists, or, maybe in this way they were simply trying to show that they “didn’t care” about the European Council.

Presidency of Azerbaijan coincided with the crises in Ukraine which they tried to use for bringing the Nagorno Karabakh issue into the agenda of the Council of Europe.

At almost all of the events organized by Azerbaijan as well as in their speeches in PACE the Azerbaijani high officials were overusing their position of presiders and were using anti-Armenian propaganda. Just to mention Aliyev’s speech at the PACE, the speech of the Foreign Minister Mamedyarov, as well as their provisions presented during some of the events in Baku.

Azerbaijan has turned its presidency into another platform for dissemination of anti-Armenian hysteria. The expectations of the CoE officials that Azerbaijan will use its presidency for improving the democracy, human rights issues and the poor condition of the rule of law vanished.

It was a scandalous presidency. Azerbaijan was strictly criticized by almost all the human rights institutions – the US, EU, CoE high officials including Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland, PACE President Anne Brasseur and the Human rights commissioner Nils Muižnieks.

Azerbaijan was the only presiding country which was not allowed by the Strasburg municipality to organize events, and to traditionally stick the logos of the chairing country on the trams.

Summing up we can assume that Azerbaijan failed its CoE chairmanship even with the investment of big moneys and the lobbyists’ attempts in the CoE. The only thing Azerbaijan managed to gain from the situation was the decision of preparation a report in the PACE on the Nagorno Karabakh. However everyone knows about the strict criticism and contempt of the media and the non-governmental organization concerning the moral values and decision making processes in PACE.

Though if we consider the damage Azerbaijan caused to CoE’s dignity, we can surely say that Azerbaijan “did succeed”.

Anna Mkrtchyan