US Ambassador Mark Libby proudly announced on the Embassy’s social media account: “To commemorate this day, I met with talented Azerbaijani journalists committed to press freedom. We continue to be deeply troubled by the arrests of Azerbaijani journalists and urge the Azerbaijani government to immediately release all individuals who are unjustly detained.”
“Talented journalists committed to press freedom” included, for example, Khadija Ismayil and her colleagues from the same sort of organizations, who, like Abzas Media, are not without reason accused in Azerbaijan of smuggling and other illegal financial transactions, or, simply put, money-laundering. Apparently, it is the persons involved in the Abzas Media case that the ambassador calls “unjustly detained” and demands that the authorities of Azerbaijan immediately release them. Overall, he is very concerned about the “pressure on independent media and civil society”. It turns out that “it is Azerbaijan’s decision to suppress the independent press. If they present it as laundering dirty money and persecute journalists and public figures, it means a change of policy. I do not know why they are doing this.” It somehow did not occur to the diplomat that it is wrong to launder money, and even more so to engage in provocations and fake news mongering at the behest of outside parties. Yet he had hardly never heard that interference in internal affairs is unacceptable.
The more so, it is in a diplomat’s job description to show respect for the law. It is inappropriate to declare someone “unjustly detained” before the end of the investigation and trial. And that is not all. It is at the very least undiplomatic to have such a “selective” meeting and to call this whole group “talented journalists committed to press freedom”. One might also ask who exactly Mr. Ambassador refers to as “independent media”. With all due respect, neither Radio Liberty nor Voice of America, whose representatives were invited to this meeting, are in any way independent media, and neither are the grant-sponsored media, willing to broadcast for a handout whatever the customer wants.
All the more questionable is the ambassador’s demand for the release of the defendants in the Abzas Media case, whom Mr. Libby calls “unjustly detained”. Once again: the above-mentioned persons were detained on charges of financial irregularities, which have very little to do with “press freedom”. Indeed, financial irregularities are not dealt with much leniency in the US itself. And most importantly, what is one to make of the priorities of the US diplomatic mission? Media outlets representatives of which were invited to the Embassy on May 3 are, to put it mildly, not among the most popular and widely read in Azerbaijan. None of them can be considered reputable “opinion-makers”. But none of the representatives of really respected, popular and professional media outlets were invited to the meeting. Are the media outlets that do not subsist on grants and dubious sources of foreign funding on the US Embassy’s list of personae non grata?
Mr. Libby held his meeting with selected members of the press at a time when the events in Georgia are making the headlines in the South Caucasus. This is a striking example of how attempts by the United States to prevent the introduction of financial transparency mechanisms in the activities of NGOs can lead to serious complications in relations even with a state that has been pursuing a strictly pro-Western course for decades. Especially if you adopt a patronizing tone and call glass breaking in the parliament a “peaceful protest”.
It is understandable when some political appointee serving as ambassador puts their foot in it. Mark Libby, however, is a career diplomat. He cannot possibly be unaware of the backlash that his statements and the very fact of this one-sided meeting will cause.
Especially when the situation is already quite heated as a result of flirtations between Washington and Yerevan and the provocative meeting in Brussels on April 5, in particular. What then are we to make of the actions of the US Embassy? Did they really not know what the reaction of the Azerbaijani public could be? Or did they deliberately trigger a scandal?
In short, it is up to the US diplomatic mission itself to make its priorities clear.
