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Aliev’s regime embarked on a Taliban-style cultural genocide in 2005 against thousands of medieval Armenian religious monuments in Jugha, Nackichevan. This has been well-documented by video footage, photographs and advanced satellite imaging, scientist of Oxford University Harout Semerdjian says in the article in “The Hill’s” Congress Block responding to the note of the Azerbaijani journalist Emil Agazade residing in London.

Mr. Semerdjian writes that in his article Agazade “passes all limits of journalistic ethics and crosses into the boundary of hate and ignorance.”

“Instead of attempting to give Congress a counter-lesson on history and geopolitics, I would highly suggest that Emil Agazade first help put his own house in order. Transparency International consistently ranks Azerbaijan among the most corrupt countries of the world, and its president Ilham Aliyev was recently named the “world’s most corrupt leader” by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project,” the scientist writes.

The article also says that the journalists in Azerbaijan continue to suffer from violence and threats, and pro-democracy activists have been beaten and imprisoned in recent years and the European Parliament has explicitly condemned Azerbaijan for “increasing number of incidents of harassment, attacks and violence against civil society and social network activists and journalists in Azerbaijan,” the report says.

The author also notes that the International diplomats have been repeatedly banned by Azerbaijani authorities from visiting Jugha, including past and present U.S. Ambassadors to Azerbaijan, Matthew Bryza and Richard Morningstar. “While the petro-dollars of the Aliyev regime fund lobbyists such as Emil Agazade to monitor the global media and attempt to suppress freedom of information, it would be much wiser for Azerbaijan’s leadership to spend the money at home, where over 40 percent of the rural population live below the poverty line,” Harout Semerdjian writes.