Mistake on Deutsche Welle's website

The map of Azerbaijan on Deutsche Welle’s site contains a serious mistake. Let's compare the maps of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova in the "weather" column:

http://www9.dw-world.de/europawetter/index.php?cc=368&language=en&zus=tag&prog=0
http://www9.dw-world.de/europawetter/index.php?cc=381&language=en&zus=tag&prog=0
http://www9.dw-world.de/europawetter/index.php?cc=332&language=en&zus=tag&prog=0
http://www9.dw-world.de/europawetter/index.php?cc=11&language=en&zus=tag&prog=0

As we see, the authors marked the administrative borders of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is an enclave inside Azerbaijan and its internationally recognized integral part. However, similar breakaway autonomies in Georgia – South Ossetia and Abkhazia – are not marked accordingly. On Moldova’s map, the self-proclaimed so-called republic of Transnistria in the east of the country is not marked either, which brings Azerbaijan into an unequal position. On the background of the resolution on the South Caucasus, recognizing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, recently adopted by the German Bundestag, this contradiction on the website of the biggest German news source seems to be political erroneous, if not discriminative towards our statehood. The best option would be to show only the state borders, as it is the case with Moldova, Armenia and Georgia. In other words, DW should be more consistent in marking borders and autonomies in the former USSR countries.

The same mistake is also observed on the following page: http://www9.dw-world.de/europakarte/eng/europakarte_fs.php?id

We call on the citizens of Azerbaijan and all friends of our country to sent a letter of the following content to Deutsche Welle's [email protected]:

Dear Mr. Erik Bettermann,

The map of Azerbaijan on Deutsche Welle’s site contains a serious mistake:
http://www9.dw-world.de/europawetter/index.php?cc=368&language=en&zus=tag&prog=0
http://www9.dw-world.de/europakarte/eng/europakarte_fs.php?id

The authors marked the administrative borders of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is an enclave inside Azerbaijan and its internationally recognized integral part. However, similar breakaway autonomies in Georgia – South Ossetia and Abkhazia – are not marked accordingly. On Moldova’s map, the self-proclaimed so-called republic of Transnistria in the east of the country is not marked either. To be consistent, DW needs to mark either all these separatist regions and autonomies or not mark any of them at all. The best option would be to show only the state borders, as it is the case with Moldova, Armenia and Georgia. To remove this discrimination against Germany’s strategic partner, Azerbaijan, I urge you to remove the administrative borders of the self-proclaimed separatist Armenia-occupied region of Nagorno Karabakh and show only the state borders of Azerbaijan. This will bring the map in line with the recently Bundestag-adopted resolution that supports territorial integrity and sovereignty of all the three states of the South Caucasus.

Below are two maps. Map 1 appears presently on DW’s site and it is incorrect, and map 2 is accurate and in conformity with international law. To remove discrimination, I urge you to replace map 1 with map 2.





Similar mistakes were found in the past in other websites, and most of them had demonstrated good faith and cooperation and corrected their mistakes, for which we are very grateful to them. I call Deutsche Welle to take steps too towards moving from the "red-light" to "green-light" list.

Sincerely,
[type in your name and send to [email protected] by indicating "Call for Consistency" in the subject line]

Vugar Seidov
AzerTac, Berlin