BAKU, Azerbaijan, Feb. 6
By Huseyn Safarov – Trend:
The Council of Europe behaves like a bully, Director General of the Russian Institute of Political Studies, well-known Russian expert Sergey Markov told Trend.
“It is possible to talk to the Council of Europe only from a position of strength as it does not understand the values of an intelligent conversation,” Markov said.
“The Council of Europe is in crisis today and it is characteristic that it made a completely illegal decision in relation to Azerbaijan,” the expert added.
“The same position is shown in relation to Russia,” Markov said. “In other words, the Council of Europe has favorites that may commit any crime, violate freedom and democracy, kill a huge number of journalists and there is no investigation.”
“Moreover, these killers of journalists receive state grants,” Markov said. “They are involved in the governmental organizations, various expert councils. The Council of Europe does not conduct investigations against them and does not even condemn them. Several countries have been chosen by [CoE] for constant picking on and attacking. Among these countries are Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan. ”
The expert reminded that the Council of Europe has recently deprived Russia of its rights.
“In fact, the Council of Europe was not entitled to do this,” Markov said. “Only after Russia stopped paying full fees and threatened that it would withdraw from the subordination of the European Court of Human Rights, the Council of Europe returned these rights and the Russian delegation returned to the full-fledged activity in PACE.”
Markov stressed that criticism towards Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan is nothing more than a demonstration of anti-Russian sentiment (Russophobia) and Islamophobia.
“Instead of observing common standards (in fact, the Council of Europe was created for this purpose), the Council of Europe has been recently inventing various 'violations' in some countries and pretends that it doesn’t notice flagrant violations in other countries,” the expert said.
“Thus, the common standards are destroyed,” the expert said. “Of course, when an organization created specifically to maintain common standards, which is its primary mission, destroys these common standards, the credibility of this organization is greatly diminishes and then disappears. As a result, a single European socio-political space is being destroyed.”