Azeri blackmailing of Swedish MPs

Since the Swedish Riksdag’s 2010 recognition of the Armenian genocide, the Azeri community in Sweden has gone into hyper drive, taking all opportunities to slander the Riksdag’s decision, especially those who voted for the recognition and were active forces in that process.

The opposition parties, the Social Democrat-Left-Green block, who supported the resolution for recognition, have been chastised for their move, but recently the Azeri Federation in Sweden has stepped up its activities and targeted a selected number of MPs in the Riksdag, namely Fredrik Malm (Liberal) and Annelie Enochson (Christian Democrat). Malm and Annelie, both members of the ruling coalition, visited Armenia last April where they met a number of Armenian officials, participated in the April 24 commemoration ceremony and received the Armenian Parliamentary medal as a token of gratitude for their role in the Swedish recognition of the genocide.

From being a general campaign of declaration of no confidence towards supporters of the genocide recognition, the campaign has now hit a genuine low-water-mark. What some Azeri organizations are doing now cannot be described by any other words, than a full-out smearing campaign against selected Swedish MPs as well as the Armenians and Armenia. At every opportunity, regardless of the discussed topic, Armenia is depicted as an aggressor, an ethnic-cleansing and corrupt country, while Armenians are highly involved in gangster and mafia activities and their lobby organizations bribe and buy MPs and officials who run the Armenian errands. This is, among others, manifested in a bizarre letter to the Liberal party, in which the Azeri organization has demanded a survey of Fredrik Malm’s financial accounts to see whether he has recently received payments from the Armenian government.

By sending numerous emails to the parliamentary groups, Malm and Enochson have been accused by Azeris for being “paid by the Armenian lobby” and “being agents of the Armenian government”. There is also a misinformation campaign which included the misquotation of another Christian Democrat MP, Ms. Désirée Petrus, who in a meeting with the Azeri Federation, had been quoted to have said that “the recognition of the Armenian genocide was a historic mistake”. However, when asked to confirm this quote, Ms. Petrus dismissed the formulation, saying that she had never said such a thing. She had commented that Riksdag was not the optimal instance to discuss this kind of matters. “However, we consider that there is a value in recognizing that a genocide has occurred in Armenia. To that we have no objections”, Ms. Petrus concluded. It should be noted that several MPs have replied to the sender of the emails pointing out the non-constructive and aggressive nature of their campaign.

The actions of the Azeri community are highly regrettable, but in some manner reflect the same regrettable posture of official Baku, i.e. misinformation, smearing and intimidation. These actions are especially questionable in a time when the entire international community is closely following the ongoing Karabakh negotiations and is carefully optimistic about the outcome from the upcoming Azeri and Armenian meeting in Kazan. A prerequisite for a positive outcome from that meeting, securing a peaceful and enduring solution to the Karabakh conflict is mutual respect between Armenians and Azeris, something which the Azeri community in Sweden is flagrantly violating.

Article written by Vahagn Avedian