Belgian authorities offer guarding to family of disgraced Azerbaijani diplomat who was rejected by colleagues
The scandal around the ‘dissident underground’ in the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan continues to flare up. The spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry Hikmet Hajiyev issued a statement on his Facebook page where he apologizes for liking his disgraced colleague Arif Mammadov’s status about the thieving oligarch officials whose actions resulted in the death of 15 people during a fire in Baku, Turan agency writes.
“As a citizen of the Azerbaijani Republic, I remain faithful to the nationwide leader Heydar Aliyev’s legacy and the president Ilham Aliyev’s domestic and foreign policy,” Hajiyev stated.
Other colleagues from the ‘guilty list’ also joined him. Javid Musayev from the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Haqqin.az that he did not support Arif Mammadov’s opposition-minded statements in Facebook. Another employee from the Foreign Ministry, Anar Madatli, wrote to the editorial of the outlet that he had liked the status accidentally, not reading it up to the end. The diplomat complained that the Foreign Ministry ignored his explanations and dismissed from his beloved work, “Now I am not writing to you as an official but as a person dismissed from the work he considered to be the meaning of his life.”
The ex-representative of Azerbaijan in the Organization of the Islamic Conference at the EU, Arif Mammadov, reported about trial against the Foreign Ministry employees who had liked his critical Facebook status. He denied the reports about asking for political asylum, but said that the Foreign Ministry of Belgium has offered to provide him and his family with guarding.
“I am extremely surprised and angered with the hunt of the best diplomats in the country. The order of repressions was issued at the repression factory of the country. These authorities only need people like Eynulla Fatullayev. It is beyond understanding how the best diplomats in the country are fired because of liking my Facebook status where I expressed condolences to the families of those killed in the tragic fire in Baku. The diplomats are made to write humiliating statements. Some compare this with the repressions in the USSR in the late 30s. To me, how it is done now cannot be called by other name than the authorities’ marasmus,” the dismissed diplomat writes.
The scandal broke out in the Azerbaijani Foreign Office because on the next day after the fire in the new residential building took the lives of 15 people because of the low-quality siding, a top official from the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan, Arif Mammadov, wrote on his Facebook, “This tragedy is every Azerbaijani’s pain and tragedy. No nation will stand this sort of shame and injustice. The officials get millions from the suffering of our people, and if they are not afraid of our people’s anger, let them be afraid of Allah’s anger!” This was what drove him into disgrace. Those who supported the Facebook post also got into “the suspect list.”
Related:
Azerbaijani media turn against their own diplomats who dared to criticize corrupt officials
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