They use anybody's photograph
The Azerbaijani mass media have once again lost their way in broad daylight, trying to depict the Karabakh party in an unfavourable light. During a day, the woman, who was killed on December 20, 2009 on the NKR and Azerbaijani armed forces' contact-line first by an "Armenian" serviceman, then, as it was found out, by an Azerbaijani soldier, turned from an «Armenian woman» into an Azerbaijani one. Moreover, a photo of a Georgian woman made in August 2008 during the war in South Ossetia was attached to the information.
The Azerbaijani mass media have practiced forgeries in their anti-Armenian propaganda for a long time. This was fixed not only by the Karabakh party. The Moscow edition New Region notes that the Azerbaijani mass media have, at least, three times used forgeries for the last three months, applying photomaterials of various countries for "proving the facts of the Armenian aggression". Besides the abovementioned forgery of the Azerbaijani Agency Vesti.az related to the killed woman, the edition notes as an example the distribution of a photo of a Georgian soldier killed in August 2008 "to confirm" the Karabakh party's losses allegedly taken place as a result of the NKR Defense Army units' attacking the Azerbaijani positions. In fact, everything was exactly the contrary.
Besides, the Russian edition unmasked Trend Azerbaijani information agency, which had informed of the completion of a documentary about the Karabakh conflict, attaching a photo of alleged "victims of the Armenian aggression", which, in fact, turned out to be a photo of deceased citizens of Kosovo taken from a Canadian francophone website.
This forgery related to the tragic events in Khojaly and placed at some Azerbaijani websites, including the one of the basic anti-Armenian misinformation center of the Heydar Aliyev Fund (www.azerbaijan.az), the leader of which is the Azerbaijani President's wife, was earlier diclosed by the NKR Foreign Ministry.
We have to state once more that against the background of the proceeding meetings of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents and the optimistic statements of the international mediators on certain progress in the Karabakh conflict settlement process, official Baku and its improvised mass media continue their aggressive information war against the RA and NKR, using all the means for introducing the Armenian parties as the misdeeds' actors and for injecting a new portion of Armenian-hatred poison into the international community's and their own people's mind.
Unfortunately, this destructive policy of official Baku isn't properly assessed by corresponding international structures, which is fraught with nullifying the multiyear peacemaking efforts.
«Democratic» Azerbaijan «integrating» into the West and its «independent» mass media should finally realize that freedom of speech is not freedom of misinformation.
We hope that in the coming year, the international community will take the counterproductive actions of the Azerbaijani authorities more seriously.
NKR MFA Information Department
