Today.Az » Society » Leader of Azerbaijani community in Lithuania: Lithuanians sharply changed attitude to Armenia
07 July 2009 [12:37] - Today.Az
Leader of Azerbaijani community in Lithuania and member of National Minorities’ Council at the Lithuanian government Mahir Hamzayev says Lithuanians have sharply changed attitude to Armenia.
“Since the foundation of our community in 1988, we tried to establish business relationship with the media in Lithuania, independent news agencies including the media of Latvia and Estonia,” Hamzayev said.
“We gave them interviews, wrote reviews and were involved in short films about the history of Azerbaijan, about our cultural heritage and national holidays. Thus we tried to convey true information about our motherland and the Karabakh conflict to the peoples of the Baltic countries,” he said.
“In 1992-1993, we organized a trip of journalists from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on the Karabakh front. They visited Agdam and Nakchivan.”
“Incidentally, the new essay by journalist Imantas Melyanasa also used articles, reports by Lithuanian authors, who visited Azerbaijan with our help in the early 90's. Then, with the support of our community, they were published in the Lithuanian media,” he said.
“They brought with them compelling materials that prove these heinous crimes. They submitted them for examination in the Ministry of Health of Lithuania, which then confirmed the presence of chemical weapons. I can say that dozens of articleson this subject have been published during the years of independence in Lithuania.”
“At the turn of 1980-1990 years here in the Baltic countries they were trying to tell the public that the conflict in Karabakh is a religious war - Islam and Christianity. Now all this is already ridiculous, but then a number of political forces in Lithuania, some of which are, incidentally, are those in opposition but who is in power supported the separatist of Nagorno-Karabakh, the committee of Karabakh and Armenia itself,” he added.
“In meantime, we established a Congress of Azerbaijanis within Baltic Congress of Azerbaijanis of Europe, because we can win the only micro fights against the Armenians, not a media war without coordination from a single center. Therefore, we need a close contact with relevant government and government agencies of Azerbaijan, with NGOs and the media. By the way, again with the help of our community, the Lithuanian political scientists, journalists and historians have written feedback and reviews on the essay by Melyanasa. Some of them have already been published in the popular local online newspapers,” he said.
“Lithuanians see the news and watch our movies on local TV. In recent years, the change in attitude to us is dictated by several aspects of activities of the Azerbaijan Republic,” he said.
“Perhaps, many have noticed that Lithuania gave a lot of votes for the representatives of Azerbaijan in contest Eurovision-2009 song contest. Lithuanians are also interested in a balanced policy of Azerbaijan towards U.S. and Russia.”
“The attitudes towards Armenia have sharply changed. Lithuanians became aware of the pro-Russian policy by Yerevan and local political, academic and student circles have negative attitude to it. Lithuanians, in fact, support cooperation of Azerbaijan with NATO New Neighborhood Program and want to be actively involved in these processes,” he said.
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