There are double standards towards Azerbaijan, Elchin Amirbayov, Assistant to the First Vice-President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, said in his interview with Polish TV Weekly, Report informs.
"In 1992, part of our country was under Armenian occupation. But the world did not give a decent answer to this. Thus, a similar scenario later took place in Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), as well as in Moldova (Transnistria). Today, there is a war in Ukraine. It's a classic domino effect. You don't answer in one place, and as a result, other similar cases arise," he said.
"Today, we see a war between Russia and Ukraine, which has caused a mobilization of the entire international community. Unfortunately, we did not see such a reaction. It turns out that there are double standards towards Azerbaijan in international relations. Unfortunately, when 20 percent of our land was illegally occupied, and a million people from these lands underwent ethnic cleansing, we did not see countries that wanted to help or protest: Warsaw, Berlin, Paris... . We were too far for them. It's not just about distance. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia are in Europe. We are members of many international European organizations, such as the OSCE, Council of Europe. The matter is about the importance of international law. If a country violates them and goes unpunished, other countries will think they can do it too. Impunity shows that it is profitable to be a villain," Amirbayov said.
He noted that had international organizations reacted correctly in the early 1990s, immediately after the aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan, the scale and results of this tragic conflict would have been different, and there would have been no other similar conflicts in the world.
The assistant to the first vice president also gave a historical overview of the path of independence of our country and the difficulties it faced in the subsequent stages: "The life of the first Azerbaijan Republic and at the same time, the first Parliamentary Republic of the Muslim East did not last long. It lasted 23 months - from 1918 to 1920, the entry of the Red Army into our country. In 1991, we regained our independence as a result of the activity of the national liberation movement of Azerbaijan, which can be compared to Poland’s Solidarity Movement. Then, in 1993, Heydar Aliyev had to face a very difficult situation. In particular, the economic situation was terrible. We had just lost most of our territories in the war with Armenia, and the country was on the brink of civil war. Heydar Aliyev preserved and strengthened the independence of the state, and returned the economy to its right direction. He is not only a great personality, but also a symbol of modern Azerbaijan. We consider him our national leader because he was the architect of the modern Republic of Azerbaijan after the restoration of independence in 1991."
Amirbayov also touched upon the roots of the Karabakh problem and the "divide and rule" policy of the Soviet Union: “Empires like the Soviet Union do everything they can to subjugate those smaller than them. This was not only the case in Azerbaijan. It was the same in Georgia and Moldova. Although Karabakh has repeatedly been the subject of territorial claims by Armenia against Azerbaijan, historically, it has always belonged to Azerbaijan. The Soviets artificially divided Azerbaijan into two parts - the main part of the country and Nakhchivan. The territory between them was given to Armenia. The idea of the Soviets was to abuse the ethnic issue, plant ‘bombs’ reflecting potential separatism, and destabilize states if necessary.”