European Parliament resolution may harm Azerbaijan-EP relations?

PanARMENIAN.Net - European Parliament resolution causes confusion and raises a lot of questions amid the current accelerated process of reforms aimed at promoting democracy in Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry official representative Elkhan Polukhov told Trend, commenting on the resolution on the critical situation of human rights and democracy in Azerbaijan adopted by the European Parliament.

"Moreover, the resolution is of unilateral and biased nature," he said. It is too politicized and largely based on unverified data that does not reflect the reality."

While the situation with freedom of speech and human rights in Azerbaijan is better than in neighbouring countries, the resolution adopted towards Azerbaijan does not correspond to the relations between Azerbaijan and the European Parliament and may seriously harm them, Polukhov said.

The European Parliament has adopted a resolution which condemns violations of human rights in Azerbaijan.

The EP expressed its deep concern at the increasing number of incidents of harassment, attacks and violence against civil society and social networks activists and journalists in Azerbaijan, which prove the determination of Azerbaijani authorities to clamp down on any forms of critical dissent and undercut the freedom of assembly.

It also called on the Azerbaijani authorities to immediately release all social media and political activists arrested in connection with the peaceful demonstrations and to drop all charges that appear to be politically motivated.