Aliyev Lies before the Whole World at UN General Assembly

 

There were plenty of Azeri commentators and officials who criticized Armenian President Serge Sarkisian’s speech at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly last week, but I did not come across any Armenian commentators or government leaders who attacked Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s ugly speech on Sept. 20.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev addressing the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly (Photo: UN)

The Azeri President’s lengthy remarks were full of lies and distortions. Let’s try to set the record straight on some of them…

The first line of Aliyev’s speech starts with a usual exaggeration and untruth, stating that “Armenia occupies 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory of Nagorno-Karabagh and seven other regions of the country.” The truth is that Armenia does not occupy any Azeri territory. Nagorno-Karabagh (Artsakh) was never a part of independent Azerbaijan. It was an autonomous Armenian-inhabited region gifted to Azerbaijan by Soviet dictator Stalin in 1923. The Armenian population of Artsakh finally liberated themselves after decades of brutal Azeri occupation. Furthermore, the Azeri claim that Armenia occupies 20 percent of Azerbaijan is false, as the region liberated by Armenians is around 15 percent, not 20.

President Aliyev then proceeds to state: “Nagorno-Karabagh is an ancient and historical part of Azerbaijan.” This is a complete lie as Azerbaijan did not exist historically as a state. It was created in 1918 with the help of the Turkish army.

Aliyev’s next big lie is that there are one million Azeri “refugees and internally displaced persons” as a result of Armenian military action. First of all, it is not one million, but several hundred thousand, just like there were several hundred thousand Armenian refugees as a result of Azeri pogroms and ethnic cleansing. If there were a large number of Azeri refugees 25 years later still living in muddy camps, this is the fault only of the Azeri government, which earns billions of petrodollars annually and does not spend any of these funds to resettle these refugees in comfortable homes. Furthermore, as we have seen in recent European publications, Azeri leaders, particularly the Aliyev family and its cronies, have stolen billions of dollars from the state oil revenues to pay for their lavish life-styles or bribe officials around the world to cover up their persistent violations of human rights. Yet, the President of Azerbaijan is not ashamed to proclaim that his country has “absolute transparency, zero tolerance to corruption and bribery.”

Aliyev then repeats the biggest lie about the so-called “Khojaly genocide” of 600 Azerbaijanis by Armenian troops during the Artsakh war. There are various versions of what exactly took place in Khojaly during that conflict, including Azeri soldiers blocking the escape routes of their own population who were then trapped and became war casualties. But even if there were a shred of evidence that 600 Azeris died during that conflict, which would be unfortunate, Azerbaijan shamelessly denies the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by Turkey starting in 1915, and yet has no qualms of perpetuating the lie that the deaths of 600 Azeris were a genocide.

President Aliyev continues his series of lies, claiming that Armenia was the one that attacked Azerbaijan in April 2016. The whole world knows that Azerbaijan was the initiator of that attack. Exposing his own lie, he warns that Azerbaijan will attack again.

Aliyev then boasts that Azerbaijan in 2011 was elected as a nonpermanent member of the U.N. Security Council with 155 countries voting in favor. What President Aliyev neglects to mention is that most of these votes were secured by lavish gifts to UN Ambassadors, as we had exposed in my weekly column in 2011.

The President of Azerbaijan shamelessly proclaims from the UN podium that the “development of democracy and human rights protection are among the top priorities of our government. All fundamental freedoms are fully provided in Azerbaijan, including freedom of expression, media freedom, freedom of assembly, religious freedom.” Everyone knows that Azerbaijan is a dictatorship with corrupt leaders, and that its jails are full of human rights activists and independent journalists.

Aliyev then goes on to announce that “representatives of all ethnic groups and religions live in Azerbaijan in peace and harmony.” Besides Armenians, who were victims of ethnic cleansing and are potential victims of a new Azeri-perpetrated genocide in Artsakh, there are many other minorities in the country who are routinely discriminated against and jailed. Calling Azerbaijan a democracy and “one of the world’s most recognized centers of multiculturalism,” is an outrageous statement!

The string of lies, distortions, and exaggerations is so long in President Aliyev’s UN speech that one needs to write an entire book to expose all of his falsehoods.

Harut Sassounian

Harut Sassounian

California Courier Editor
Harut Sassounian is the publisher of The California Courier, a weekly newspaper based in Glendale, Calif. He is the president of the Armenia Artsakh Fund, a non-profit organization that has donated to Armenia and Artsakh one billion dollars of humanitarian aid, mostly medicines, since 1989 (including its predecessor, the United Armenian Fund). He has been decorated by the presidents of Armenia and Artsakh and the heads of the Armenian Apostolic and Catholic churches. He is also the recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

6 Comments

  1. Living well, as they say, is the best revenge. A few politicians whose actions and words were swayed by Azerbaijan’s bribes have been exposed … and there are many others who are sitting pretty and enjoying their ill-gotten benefits. Armenians living well on our ancestral lands would be the long-lasting (therefore, best) response, don’t you think?

  2. You can see on youtube this clown’s speech about “genocide” and “war crimes”. And as Aliyev was making these accusations against Armenia, his daughter and wife were seen laughing and taking selfies and making weird faces. That about sums up correctly what Azerbaijan is all about.

    The daily mail had an aptly titled piece on this you can search online:

    “Genocide…LOL! Daughter of Azerbaijani president sparks fury after she is filmed taking SELFIES during father’s speech to UN about alleged war crimes”

    For youtube here is a sample…
    watch?v=YOzE8jyR56g

  3. The guy aliyev is a delusional misfit. he has no ethics, is a professional liar…. A professional thief along with his cronies. The TRUTH always speaks out and he cannot hide from the TRUTH. The world knows this man as a liar but are afraid of exposing him because of all the gifts that are lined up for their personal thanks for keeping him on the seat as the leader of azerbaijan – what a bunch of useless gutless politicians.

  4. For more on Azerbaijan’s conduct of exemplary elections, read OSCE
    reports preparedby that organization’s election observation missions. Their elections are so corrupt that OSCE didn’t even attempt to observe their last mockery of democracy election.

  5. I did not come across any Armenian commentators or government leaders who attacked Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s ugly speech on Sept. 20. Writes Harut Sassounian . How true is statement is. I don’t see why are not we responding to the world . We should be more active , we should response this lies. We have to spread the speech Alivey gave at UN.

  6. Everyday the Azeri state run propaganda media purposefully promotes anti Armenian articles which include such things as, ‘Armenia is breaking the cease fire again’, ‘Armenian population reduced’, ‘Armenian debt going up’, ‘Armenian excluded from regional projects’, Armenian shooting at civilians etc.. Never once do you see Armenian state run media going after the corrupt nature and lies of Azerbaijan and capitalizing upon the bribe and money laundering scandal recently in the news. Armenia is actually losing the propaganda war. Armenia needs better proper PR campaign.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*