Opposition wants Azerbaijan to be expelled from Council of Europe

The Great Creation party is going to make an appeal to the Council of Europe to expel Azerbaijan from this organization. A press release of the opposition party reads the Supreme Majlis of the party made a decision to prepare the appeal to the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) on the eve of its October 5 session, during which the issue of Azerbaijan's honoring commitments to the Council of Europe are to be considered. The party believes Azerbaijan ruled over with "feudal" laws, where even deputies are subjected to torture, cannot be a member of the Council of Europe.

Another opposition party, Umid, accuses the authorities of persecuting the press. The party's statement reads leading opposition newspapers and magazines are under the authorities' permanent pressure: their contributors are assaulted and abducted, and courts impose heavy fines on them. The purpose of it, in the party's opinion, is to bankrupt the opposition media and make them fall silent.

According to the statement, there have been 65 trials in Georgia and 70 ones in Armenia for the last year. For the same period in Azerbaijan 700 trials have taken place. It shows the scale of the campaign to suppress freedom of speech in Azerbaijan started by the country's authorities after the 2003 presidential election. The Umid party urges the authorities to put an end to these repressions and release from custody editor-in-chief of the Yeni Musavat newspaper Rauf Arifoglu, who have been arrested for already 11 months.