For years, all were convinced that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is pursuing a consistent Armenophobic policy in the country. The best evidence of it is granting the title of a hero to murderer Ramil Safarov at the state level who axed Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan in Budapest when the latter was sleeping. Azerbaijan has a “black list” of hundreds of people visiting Nagorno Karabakh who dare to visit Artsakh and introduce Artsakh and the people of Artsakh to the world in a positive light. Currently, there are 623 foreigners on the “black list” of Azerbaijani as “persona non grata.”
There was a time when Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry had included the name of the newly appointed Minister of Internal Affairs of France, Bruno Le Roux, on the list of “persona non grata” whose access to Azerbaijan is prohibited. The reason is that Bruno Le Roux being a French Parliament member has visited Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2015. Recently, official Baku responding to the appointment of Le Roux on behalf of the Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hikmat Hajiyev, announced that he is included on the “blacklist” of Azerbaijan for his “illegal visit” to Karabakh in the status of the French parliamentarian in September 2015 and is a member of the “France-Artsakh” friendship group.
Recently, another scandalous event took place. A citizen of Russia and Israel, a 40-year-old Alexander Lapshin was arrested in Minsk the next day of his visit to the capital of Belarus with his wife. Belarusian law enforcement authorities had arrested the blogger at the request of Azerbaijan for Lapshin had visited Artsakh in April of 2011 and in October 2012 and had made posts in his blog about these visits. He has also appeared on the “blacklist” of Azerbaijan. It turned out that the Azerbaijani Prosecutor’s Office has filed a criminal lawsuit for public calls on abuse of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and the lack of documents required for crossing the political border of the country. Azerbaijan was not satisfied with this much. Baku demands to extradite the blogger, and according to the latest publications on the Azerbaijani websites, the extradition of Lapshin to Azerbaijan arrested in Belarus may be carried out.
It is known that Lapshin has acted with critical reports about Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Israeli Foreign Ministry is taking measures to prevent the extradition of Lapshin to Azerbaijan. It is noteworthy that the arrest of Lapshin took place about two weeks after Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko’s visit to Azerbaijan where Aliyev awarded Lukashenko the highest award of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev Order. This disgraceful event apparently did not bother the Russian authorities, otherwise, they would demand an explanation from the Ambassador of Belarus.
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Russia-Azerbaijan and Belarus-Azerbaijan relations are on the level that the arrest of the blogger visiting Artsakh does not cause any problem by the demand of Azerbaijan. As for the RA Foreign Ministry, the Spokesman had reported the “Liberty” RFE/RL that the Foreign Ministry is working on the case of blogger Alexander Lapshin arrested in Belarus at the request of Azerbaijan, and added, “… so far we cannot present the details of our activities for known reasons.”
Emma GABRIELYAN
