National Endowment for Democracy and affiliated groups

[Magda Hassan]

Good news if true.

Baku officially closes office of U.S. National Democratic Institute

The office of the U.S. National Democratic Institute in Baku was officially closed, writes Turan referring to an informed source in Washington.

According to the article in fact, the office ceased to function in March, after the authorities accused this structure of financing subversive youth against the government of Azerbaijan.

"In particular, the head of the presidential administration, and previously, the law enforcement agencies have stated that with money from the NDI youth groups prepared in Azerbaijan the analogue of the "Arab Spring." The NDI representative in Baku, Alex Grigorevs, was declared the chief "saboteur", and the government was so afraid of him, that banned his return to Baku and pick up his personal belongings and dog," the agency writes.

As noted in the article a number of sites working for the Azerbaijani authorities "suddenly" got copies of bank documents proving that the representative of NDI debited during the year about 2 million dollars. Those sites who call themselves human rights, argued that money was sent to Facebook revolution in Azerbaijan. Irrefutable "proof", according to the authors of publications, was that NDI has provided a grant for the youth organization NIDA, seven members of which were arrested and announced the organizers of the failed revolution.

In her interview with Turan agency, the NDI regional director for Eurasia, Laura Dzhyuet, said that the NDI activities in Azerbaijan are completely transparent and the organization fully complies with local laws.

Therefore, the assumption that the NDI is involved in any other activities is "completely false," she said.

In turn, President of the NDI, Kenneth Wollack, stated that "such articles are a complete fabrication and discredit the professionalism of the authors." Regarding the funds allocated to projects in Azerbaijan, they were spent on the infrastructure projects, including roads, lighting, utilities, parks, education and ecology.

In its turn, according to the Azerbaijani news portal "Haqqin.az" the OSCE special representative for the South Caucasus Joao Soares stated that there are serious problems in the field of democracy and human rights in Azerbaijan.

According to him, the OSCE is doing everything possible to create democratic values in the South Caucasus. "For example, we will continue to promote dialogue between the authorities and civil society in Azerbaijan. We call on the Azerbaijani authorities to provide civil society with democratic development. True pluralism is means a need to respect fundamental freedoms," he said.

Source: Panorama.am