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Imagine disgusting Australian politician praising Azerbaijan election that surpassed Australia’s experience

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Craig Kelly

Craig Kelly

The Armenian National Committee of Australia has condemned Federal Australian parliamentarianCraig Kelly for comments he has made praising Azerbaijan’s democracy after leading a delegation to observe the oil-rich dictatorship’s most recent presidential elections.

Kelly, the Member for Hughes, remarked to Azerbaijan’s Azernews media outlet, that he “saw an election organisation that surpassed Australia’s experience in this field” and that “we, together with my colleagues, will undoubtedly bring this useful experience home.”

Kelly also said: “I learned a lot of new things and I propose to apply it in Australia. I saw the birth date of voters, there was a man born in 1928. This means that he is 90 years old. This is a significant day for him, since he voted in democratic conditions.”

The Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU) expressed their dismay that these quotes by an Australian politician were so different to the testimonies of observers from other democratic countries, who have almost universally condemned the undemocratic environment in which these elections were held.

“We think it is a legitimate question to ask,” said ANC-AU Executive Director Haig Kayserian. “Why is Craig Kelly out of sync with every other international observer from a recognised democracy who monitored the very same elections?”

“To ignore that Azerbaijan has been ranked below countries such as Iran, Iraq, China and Russia in terms of civil and political freedoms by Freedom House, and to suggest Australia should learn from such a regime, is completely unacceptable,” Kayserian added.

Alex Christie-Miller, is utterly disgusting, Erdogan changing the date of Gallipoli

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4STBl_l2_biggerThe change in date of this year’s commemorations has been widely perceived as a crude attempt to distract attention from Armenian commemorations of the 1915 massacres and forced deportations which decimated the Ottoman Armenian population, which Armenians — who consider the events of 1915 to constitute genocide — commemorate on April 24. “The game TR gov’t is playing with Gallipoli – politicising it to compete with Armenian Genocide commemorations – is utterly disgusting, IMO [in my opinion],” Alex Christie-Miller, an İstanbul-based journalist working for The Times, Newsweek Europe and the Christian Science Monitor, posted on his Twitter account on March 19.

Joost Lagendijk, a former Green Party deputy in the European Parliament who also served as the co-chairman of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, also criticized Turkey’s move to commemorate the Gallipoli Campaign on the same day as the Armenian commemorations, calling it a “shameless and all-too-transparent effort” to try and distract attention from the Armenian “Genocide” in his Today’s Zaman column on March 17. Lagendijk said that shifting the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli Campaign to the same day “won’t work and it will unnecessarily discredit Turkey.”

Turkey’s move also offended Turkish citizens of Armenian descent. Speaking to Agos ­– a Turkish-Armenian weekly formerly edited by murder victim Hrant Dink — after Erdoğan’s invitation, many Turkish citizens of Armenian descent reacted strongly to Erdoğan’s invitation to Sarksyan, calling it a “joke” and an “ill-mannered” act, and further criticizing it as a “political maneuver.”