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Wall Street Journal publishes article criticizing double standards of Human Rights Watch

Politics Materials 3 August 2020 14:40 (UTC +04:00)
Wall Street Journal publishes article criticizing double standards of Human Rights Watch

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug. 3

Trend:

The Azerbaijanis are well aware of Human Rights Watch organization and the organization's former director of the Middle East and North Africa division Sarah Leah Whitson, Trend reports.

Both this organization and Sarah Whitson have always been 'notorious' for their biased position towards Azerbaijan.

Although the name of the organization is translated as "guardian of human rights", its activity does not correspond with it.

In other words, Human Rights Watch guided by double standards is acting in the opposite direction by violating human rights.

Therefore, Human Rights Watch’s reports are no longer taken seriously. The true intentions and activity of this "human rights" organization are known not only in Azerbaijan, but also in other countries.

The issue has been recently highlighted by influential The Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal published an article criticizing the two-faced approach regarding illegal settlement in occupied territories demonstrated by Human Rights Watch, which regularly criticized the situation regarding the human rights in Azerbaijan.

The author of the article is Eugene Kontorovich, professor at the US George Mason University’s Scalia Law School and scholar at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem.

Kontorovich stressed that hypocritical attacks on Israel are common, but Sarah Leah Whitson takes them to a new level.

“As the Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch, she was one of the sharpest critics of the Jewish state’s presence in the West Bank,” the article said. “Yet elsewhere Ms. Whitson strongly supports settlements in occupied territories.”

“The settlements Ms. Whitson supports are in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area that was within the borders of post-Soviet Azerbaijan until Armenia occupied the region after a protracted war,” the article said. “Since then, the Armenian leadership in Yerevan has actively encouraged the movement of settlers into the area. The United Nations, international courts and the US all consider it occupied Azerbaijani territory.”

The professor wrote that Ms. Whitson, who is from an Armenian family, served as master of ceremonies at a 2018 fundraiser for the Armenian National Committee of America, a pro-settler charity that views Karabakh as an “integral part of the Armenian homeland.”

“Even as Ms. Whitson led Human Rights Watch’s campaign to boycott Israeli economic activity in the West Bank, she took to Twitter to promote Armenian wines, including from the occupied territories,” the article said.

Asked about the inconsistencies between her positions, Ms. Whitson responded by email: “My personal support for Armenian diaspora organizations pertains to their charitable and educational work in Armenia and their efforts to advocate for recognition of the so-called “Armenian Genocide”.”

“She specifically praised the group for helping Syrian Armenians who have “resettled in Armenia”; many or most such refugees have been resettled in the occupied territory,” the article said.

“All abovementioned aspects show that by posing as a 'human rights defender', Whitson is in fact an egregious human rights violator,” the article said. “At the same time, this demonstrates her dual approach to the same issue.”

“Given such a situation, any report and statement by Whitson or Human Rights Watch cannot be considered objective and reliable,” the article said.

“As the organization that turns a blind eye to the expulsion of people from their lands and the illegal settlement of the occupied territories, it can in no way be considered a defender of human rights,” the article said.

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