Azerbaijani Youth of Canada Network sent an open letter to Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC), responsing to anti-Azerbaijani hate campaign launched by the Committee.
“You are spending your valuable time at dishonorable attempts to discredit another country via a hate-campaign, which is based on impaired facts (…) Isn’t ANCC, as an Canadian-Armenian organization, supposed to engage in issues related to the Armenian-Canadian community, or at most deal with problems of Armenia? (…) it is thought-provoking that you’re not spending your resources more productively, such as working toward the betterment of Armenian-Canadians, or at most, dealing with the plethora of issues of Armenia itself, such as poverty, corruption and unemployment in the country”, said in the letter.
Timing of the campain is quite succesful. When there is an increasing pressure on Armenia about the role it and its leaders, including the newly “reelected” president Sargsyan played in the Khojaly tragedy and also in the wake of the obviously rigged andundemocratic elections, such campaign can only serve to deflect attention from suchissues, noted in the letter.
It’s mentioned in the letter that there is also the continuing fact of more than two decades of occupation of a significant part of Azerbaijan and ethnic cleansing of more than 800 thousand Azerbaijanis from these lands. Coupled with 200 thousand Azerbaijanis expulsed from Armenia itself, such magnitude of problems- having every ninth inhabitant a displaced person and devoid of one fifth of its territory, would create huge difficulties for any country. Thus, if there are problems in Azerbaijan that ANCC so eagerly plans to cover, the Armenian contribution to them is obvious.
This hate campaign, maliciously titled “Azerbaijan: 30 Days of Shame” only serves to increase hatred, aversion and prejudice between the communities. It amounts to the betrayal of Canadian values, which highly regard the good will and understanding between different ethnic groups, noted in the letter.