LONDON. February 14, 2013: Yesterday, the British Members of the Parliament from the Labour Party Paul Flynn and Virendra Sharma co-sponsored a parliamentary motion to condemn the conduct of a number of the British parliamentarians who had supported the latest efforts of the authoritarian Azerbaijani government to strike down the resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Azeri political prisoners.
“That this House is appalled by the failure of the Council of Europe (COE) to protect human rights in Azerbaijan by surrendering to the intense lobbying of the Azeri government’s agents; is shocked that all but one of the Conservative UK delegates rejected the COE Rapporteur’s report on Azeri political prisoners; notes that the leader of the UK delegation criticised the rapporteur, Christoph Strasser, for failing to visit Azerbaijan, ignoring the repeated refusals of the Aliyev regime to grant him a visa; accepts the integrity of Christoph Strasser’s report rather than the tainted opinion of those who have been royally entertained by the Aliyev regime in Azerbaijan; condemns the re-imprisonment of human rights campaigner and blogger Emin Milli and the persecution of the writer Akram Aylisli and his family; calls on the Conservative delegation to reassess its close links in the European democratic group with oppressive anti-democratic delegates including Aliyev’s and Putin’s stooges; regrets the damage done to the reputation of the COE as a defender of human rights; and looks to the European Union to use its new resources to insist on acceptable international standards of democratic conduct.”
