Prime Minister Milanović was very angry at the protest of the House of Human Rights and the Center for Peace Studies. He drew a line and clearly sees that Azerbaijan is not an overly undemocratic country, and he is disgusted by the fact that one day we will come to the Government with suitcases asking them to fill them with money, and then we won't be interested in where they came from.
We sent him a prompt reply, but also sat down and calculated how much money we actually receive from the state budget. The amount for the Center for Peace Studies is 3% of the total budget for 2012, to the House of Human Rights 8%, and BaBama 13,43%We wouldn't last very long if our existence depended on budget money, wouldn't we?
Here is the statement on the statement: Statement from the Human Rights House regarding the statement by Prime Minister Zoran Milanović regarding the protest by the Center for Peace Studies and the Human Rights House
We congratulate the Prime Minister on his ingenious statement regarding the protests organized by the Center for Peace Studies and the House of Human Rights during the visit of Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan. The leader of a social democratic party and the Prime Minister of a country that claims to be democratic and respectful of human rights has truly shown that he understands what a developed democracy and responsible citizenship are. We have just a few questions and comments:
Mr. Milanovic,
1.) Who authorized you to determine the line above or below which a country falls when assessing its undemocratic regime?
2.) On what basis do you claim that Azerbaijan will never be a democratic state? Remember that only 15 years ago Croatia had similar problems, but we fought against them, and in that fight, you and your party once participated and then you considered civil society's support for democratic changes desirable!
3.) Have you perhaps heard about the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and how will you comment on its Resolution on Azerbaijan adopted on January 23, 2013? Will you also tell them that they have no idea what they are talking about and where they should draw the line?
4.) Do you know what the role of organizations that protect human rights is in developed democracies?
5.) Do you know that our partner organization, the House of Human Rights in Azerbaijan, has been banned from working since 2011? We will send them your statement. 6.) Will you perhaps follow the example of Muasir Musafat, the leader of the Azerbaijani party that is with Aliyev? Namely, he publicly announced that he will pay a reward of 12,000 dollars to the person who cuts off the ear of the writer Akram Aylisli, who, dissatisfied with his novel about the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, was stripped of the title of "People's Writer", stripped of his pension and ordered to be expelled from the Society of Writers? Is there an ear you would like to see cut off?
6.) On the eve of the elections, will you ban the work of GONG, if it is okay that the Center for Election Monitoring and Analysis of Democracy is not allowed to work in Azerbaijan?
7.) Do you know how NGOs in the Republic of Croatia, the country of which you are the Prime Minister, are allocated funds from the state budget: certainly not by someone coming to the Government to collect money, but through a competition with very strict selection criteria!
And one more thing, is the money you are supposedly giving us yours or does it come from all taxpayers? So we are a burden to you, not organizations that do the job because the Government and its institutions at all levels are not able to do it themselves, so we are "raising the price" of the state we all live in? Given that in your "speech" you call for the protection of the President of the Republic of Croatia, we must inform you that unlike you, the President's comments reflect an understanding of the role and goal of human rights organizations, and the reasons why we reacted.
For the Human Rights House: Sanja Sarnavka, President of the Board of Directors of the Human Rights House
