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“Since I was deprived of the right to reply to some accusations made against Armenia yesterday by the representative of Azerbaijan, I take this opportunity to respond and to set the record straight. And indeed, since the session is about countering the hate speech, it seems to be the right setting to respond to the hate speech directed against my country,” Elen Harutyunyan, the head of the media affairs division of the Armenian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday at the OSCE 15th annual South Caucasus Media Conference titled “Quality Journalism for Trustworthy and Credible Information” in Tbilisi, Georgia, commenting on the anti-Armenian statements of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev.

Before coming to the subject of the matter, the official voiced concerns over the continuous abuse of the OSCE platform to disseminate anti-Armenian propaganda, hatred and false information under the inaction of the moderator.

“I would like to strongly request the moderators of the sessions to be attentive and to exercise their authority and prevent panelists from using this format for conducting what should be called hostile information directed against another country. I hope that the organizers will draw necessary conclusions and we will not have the same situation next year,” Harutyunyan said.

According to her, on the other hand, the representative of Azerbaijan vividly showed the extent of hostility towards Armenia and the Armenians that the Azerbaijani government is cultivating in the country.

"And with each passing year this narrative is being enriched with new nuances. Mr Hajiyev went as far as to accuse Armenia of committing a holocaust, uttering an allegation which relates to an extremely sensitive subject for the people who survived the Genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire,” she said. “It seems, that you do not know the value of the word, but we do. And firmly reject all your groundless accusations. And when it comes to refugees, then we should speak about the almost half a million Armenians that barely escaped with their lives from the rampage of marauding gangs in the Armenian districts of the cities in Azerbaijan, including the capital, escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs. But the Armenian government did not keep them hostage of foreign policy games, since the rights of these people were the ultimate value.”   

The foreign ministry official reminded that it has become a good old tradition for the Azerbaijani authorities, that whenever someone is speaking about the pitiful state of democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Azerbaijan, they dodge all the questions by diverting the attention towards Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

“And by the way, the conflict is about the right of the people of Artsakh to live in a free and democratic country, which Azerbaijan is obviously not. And the sooner Azerbaijan comes to terms with it, the sooner we will be able to find a sustainable peace.

“Nagorno-Karabakh, or I should say Republic of Artsakh is an independent state with fully functioning democratic institutions, where freedom of the media and pluralism of opinions is ensured and respected, and well recognized by the international relevant organizations. They do not put journalists in prison on bogus charges, they do not shut down media outlets and they do not restrict access of journalists and they do not put them in black lists. The authorities of Artsakh believe in the right to information and the freedom of media and ensure it both in law and in practice.

“And the final observation. Mr Hajiyev has been complaining about the revelations about the widespread corruption scheme targeting European politicians, known as Azerbaijani Laundromat, which were made by the Organized Crime and Corruption reporting project. He called it unfair ‘’cold-war type propaganda’’ against Azerbaijan without any hard evidence. But it seems, the evidence provided was enough for Italian prosecutors, for Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly and others to take necessary legal actions. Instead of spending millions trying to bribe European politicians to prevent their criticism of the situation with democracy, human rights and rule of law in Azerbaijan, I would strongly recommend to try and build a genuine democratic modern state, believe me, it will be much more economically efficient and much more beneficial for the Azerbaijani people,” she concluded.