(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) 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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