He is also hugely corrupt, and his authoritarian regime has one of the world’s worst records on human rights.
Last month, continuing a crackdown on independent media and nongovernmental organizations, police officers raided
the offices of the United States-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty in Baku — known locally as Radio Azadliq — taking away computers
and documents and sealing the premises. A dozen R.F.E./R.L. employees
were detained and questioned.
A few weeks earlier, the government jailed
a well-known investigative reporter, Khadija Ismayilova, who had worked
for the broadcaster and had reported on the lucrative business dealings
of Mr. Aliyev’s family. The government first tried to frighten and
blackmail her, then hit her with the Orwellian charge that she had
pushed a lover toward suicide. Another critic of the regime, Leyla
Yunus, a prominent human rights activist, has been in jail since April
along with her husband, Arif Yunus.
Mr.
Aliyev, of course, is not the only dictator whose skillful politics and
control of valuable natural resources have confronted American and
European policy makers with what the cable released by WikiLeaks called
“a choice between U.S. interests and U.S. values.” His father, Heydar
Aliyev, ruled Azerbaijan with an iron hand from 1969 to his death in
2003, first as its Soviet boss and then as its president. The son,
assisted by Azerbaijan’s oil wealth, has steadily built on the father’s
cult of personality through three questionable elections.
Yet
even as Mr. Aliyev cultivates the West, he is convinced that
foreign-financed organizations, including R.F.E./R.L., are out to get
him. Like his partner in authoritarianism, Vladimir Putin, he sees a
hostile American hand behind everything from the ouster of President
Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine to the various Arab uprisings, and he is
determined to nip any such opposition in the bud. On Dec. 4, Mr.
Aliyev’s top lieutenant, Ramiz Mehdiyev, published a 60-page manifesto
complaining of a “fifth column” of nongovernmental organizations
plotting a revolution, and suggesting that Ms. Ismayilova was getting
her information from “foreign spies.”
The
West must understand that the authoritarian Mr. Aliyev is the real Mr.
Aliyev. As he accelerates his campaign to crush opponents and any other
semblance of freedom, the United States and Europe should make far
clearer than they have that while they may be compelled to do business
with him, they have no illusions about what he is and the severe damage
he is doing to his country.'
"The New York Times," January 12, 2015 (editorial)
No comments:
Post a Comment