Dear colleagues,

I am not going to talk about the Azerbaijani sultanate. I don’t want to talk about the Azerbaijani imprisoned journalists and public figures, whose number reaches 80 in Azerbaijan according to the Azerbaijani human rights defenders. I'm not going to talk about the health condition of some Azeri political prisoners, which is already critical. I also don’t want to talk about that if someone in CE member state Azerbaijan dares to make even the slightest criticism on the Aliyev’s clan immediately became a drug addict, a hooligan, a person who evades taxes and ends up in a prison.

I was just shocked by this indecent and shameful report, which was prepared by Mr Agramunt and Mr Iwiński known to us for their explicit orientation. Of course, I think that no one in this room being informed who are the co-rapporteurs on Azerbaijan wouldn’t honestly make fun of it. It turns out that for Mr Agramunt and Mr Iwiński the most reliable source to write their report was the Azeri-Press agency (APA). And our honorable co-rapporteurs join the APA accusing Armenia in spreading disinformation against Azerbaijan, “a Beacon of Democracy” in order to frustrate the first European Games taking place in Baku. As mentioned by the famous co-rapporteurs it turns out that the Armenian lobby and some western NGOs maliciously exaggerate the issues of human rights, press freedom, corruption and democracy. It’s an epochal marasmus. As for the facts published by the International human rights organizations on the disgraceful anti-democratic situation in Azerbaijan, here again the comment of the Azeri-Press agency is closer to the heart of our honorable co-rapporteurs, according to which the mentioned organizations direct the attention of the international community to the internal affairs of Azerbaijan in a distorted way. Of course, it is clear that the most reliable source for these co-rapporteurs is not the prisons filled with journalists and civic activists, but personally, Ilham Heydar Aliyev. It is also clear why Mr Agramunt and Mr Iwiński refer to their ally Bob Walter’s another shameful initiative trying to distort the facts.

Dear colleagues, how long should we allow to publicly dishonor our structure in this way? Of course, if we have decided to respect the fundamental values of our institution and not to turn the Council of Europe into semi-oil Sultan subsidiary. I join Martin Schulz’s statement, the President of the European Parliament that dictatorships have no place in Europe. Otherwise, the impression is that the Stockholm syndrome comes into play in our institution, when the hostages begin to sympathize with their captors. As you see, the captor, in this case, is Azerbaijan.