On the occasion of the International Press Freedom Day, the United States Ambassador to Baku, Mark Libby, received a group of Azerbaijani journalists at his residence. The ambassador thanked them for accepting the invitation and highlighted the advice of the day. He said that he has been officially representing the United States in Azerbaijan for several months now, and he got to know the “general situation”. The ambassador emphasized that since November of last year in Azerbaijan, “pressures against the right to freedom of speech have intensified.”
Ambassador Libi said, “I take my hat off to you for continuously and conscientiously fulfilling their professional duty under these conditions.” The official press of Baku did not spread any information about that meeting. It is symbolic that the US ambassador invited several journalists to a reception when it was reported that some of them had been summoned to the police’s organized crime headquarters for questioning.
With that step, Ambassador Libi is implying to the authorities of Azerbaijan that they are under the protection of the USA? He stated at the meeting that the United States does not deny that it “provides financial support to several non-governmental organizations in Azerbaijan, but it does so very transparently, and the existing concerns can be answered by state-owned structures.” What did Ambassador Libby imply? Have Azerbaijani officials tried to enter into a deal with US-funded NGOs?
Of course, the US ambassador organized a reception for non-official Azerbaijani journalists for political reasons. Sources of the Azerbaijani exile in Europe and some experts consider a “direct connection” between the arrest of journalists and the publications of “Sputnik Azerbaijan” website. first, the media presents some persons, such as the human rights defender Mamedli, as a “political technologist of the Soros and Color Revolution”, mentioning their financial sources, then police searches follow, “large sums of foreign currency are found” in their apartments – and then the arrest follows, then detention is chosen as a preventive measure.
Accordingly, there is an impression that the persecutions of the Aliyev administration against Western influence are “directed from Moscow”. Ambassador Libby seems to be trying to “save” the “last Mohicans” of Western orientation in Baku. Secretary of State Blinken addressed this issue during the last phone conversation with Aliyev. But literally the next day, Anar Mamedli was kidnapped from the street and sentenced to four months of preliminary detention. Schwabe, the head of the German delegation to the PACE, stated that with this step, Azerbaijan “blocks the way to return to the PACE”.
The issue of freedom of speech and opinion is, of course, the “outer layer” of US-Azerbaijan relations, so to speak. What deep differences are there? Most importantly, how principled are they? The official media reports that the government of Azerbaijan has signed an agreement with two more lobbying organizations in Washington to counterbalance the growing influence of the Armenian Congress of America in Congress. As far as it is considered, Aliyev’s expectations are related to the US presidential elections. The ties between former President Trump and the Azerbaijani oligarch are well known.
Most likely, until the end of the year, US-Azerbaijan relations will remain in the mode of “stable uncertainty”. Apparently, Washington will not take practical steps against Aliyev’s administration, but it is not expected to “melt the snow” either. Doesn’t Ambassador Libby’s “hats off” gesture mean that the most Washington can do at this stage is a public show of respect for the “last Mohicans” of free speech?
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