BAKU, Azerbaijan, January 8. US-biased steps against multicultural Azerbaijan look mindless, the Chairman of the Ukrainian Congress of Azerbaijan Public Association and veteran of the first Karabakh war Yuri Osadchenko told Trend.
He made the remark, commenting on the recent decision of the US State Department to designate Azerbaijan as a Special Watch List country for engaging in or tolerating violations of religious freedom.
According to him, the steps taken by the US are more surprising, as it is a well-known and widely accepted fact that representatives of absolutely all religious communities in Azerbaijan live and operate freely.
"In Azerbaijan, the state builds synagogues and churches and renovates them at its own expense. A Catholic church was built in Azerbaijan, and a Lutheran church was renovated. Our country represents several major Christian denominations, including Catholicism and Lutheranism. Historical Albanian-Udi Christian temples are being restored. Some of them have been around for nearly 2,000, some 1,000, 700–800 years," said Osadchenko.
He noted that all this is an indicator of religious freedom in Azerbaijan and pointed out the shortsightedness of the aforementioned biased steps by the US.
"Let's remember how 20 years ago Avigdor Lieberman, then the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, said that Azerbaijan is the only country in the world after Israel that builds synagogues at state expense. Nearly 10 years ago, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Steinmeier (Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the current President of Germany) stated that Azerbaijan has two major export items: energy resources and multiculturalism, which could be exported worldwide. This is evidence of how various ethnic groups and religious denominations coexist here in a multicultural way, living together, building a unified state, and developing it for millennia," Osadchenko said.
According to the chairman of the Ukrainian Congress of Azerbaijan, no state in the world, including the US, annually allocates financial resources from the state budget for religious communities.
“Every year in Azerbaijan, hundreds of thousands are allocated to Jewish religious communities, including mountainous Jews and European Jews individually, as well as Christian religious communities. The only country in the world that allocates funding from the state budget to religious communities is Azerbaijan," he pointed out.
"During recent meetings with representatives of the Council of Europe who came to Azerbaijan to study the state’s attitude towards ethnic groups—we also attended those meetings - members of the delegation saw all this with their own eyes, and it's very surprising to see the US top officials, who, of course, are familiar with the conclusions of this delegation, are taking such provocative steps just to get the votes of Californian Armenians before the US presidential election,” Osadchenko noted.
As he emphasized, these decisions won't play a special role in the life of society.
“Our society lived and will continue to live according to the principles of multiculturalism. The inclusion of Azerbaijan in the mentioned list won't affect either the internal life of the people of Azerbaijan or its external image, because thanks to the huge number of visits of foreign leaders and politicians to Azerbaijan, everyone saw how relationships between different religious communities are developing in the country,” he added.
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