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Incumbent President Ilham Aliyev salutes the statute of Heydar Aliyev, his father

WASHINGTON DC. June 15, 2010: In a further development on the backtracked “Santa Fe Heydar Aliyev Day” story, AzeriReport has learned that the Santa Fe mayor’s office was initially asked to issue a birthday proclamation for the late president of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, on April 14, 2010 at the request of the Azerbaijani government’s lobbying agent in the United States, The Tool Shed Group LLC led by its founder Jason Katz. This is the same Jason Katz who wrote an article at the Huffington Post praising the Azerbaijani government after the Washington Post published at article by Ali Karimli, an opposition leader from Azerbaijan.

In trying to justify its request, the Tool Shed Group of Jason Katz also provided misleading information to the Mayoral Office of Santa Fe about the role of Heydar Aliyev, stating that he “extricated Azerbaijan from the Soviet Union” and that he was “the first leader of the modern post-Soviet Azerbaijan”.

In reality, Heydar Aliyev was only the third president of post-Soviet Azerbaijan, after Ayaz Mutallibov and Abulfaz Elchibey, and by the time Heydar Aliyev came to power in a 1993 coup, Azerbaijan was already an independent country after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, was formally recognized by the UN and all major world-powers and its territory has long been free from any Russian/ Soviet troops.

As was reported earlier, Santa Fe mayor David Coss issued the proclamation designating May 10 as Heydar Aliyev Day. The mayor’s office later backtracked on its own proclamation by stating that “a proclamation for “Heydar Aliyev” will not be prepared again from the mayor’s office”. This was done in response to a letter sent by the Azerbaijani-Americans for Democracy (AZAD), which provided information about the controversial character of such proclamations and the violations of human rights and freedoms committed by the regime founded by Heydar Aliyev and now led by his son, the current president Ilham Aliyev.

The e-mail exchange between Jason Kat’s lobbying group, acting on behalf of the Azerbaijani Consulate General, and the Santa Fe mayor’s office indicates that the request for Heydar Aliyev birthday was coupled with a similar request for the May 28 Republic Day in Azerbaijan. Such “coupling tactic” was used in the past by the pro-government Azerbaijani Diaspora organizations in the United States, celebrating the two events at the same time.

In his comments to Azeri Report, the AZAD chairman Elmar Chakhtakhtinski explained this by the fact that Heydar Aliyev birthday celebration is a typical “salute to the Great Leader” commonly forced upon the population in many oppressive societies from North Korea to Cuba. However, outside of Azerbaijan different methods have to be employed to attract attention to this “event”. Combining or timing the requests for May 10 to the observance appeals for May 28 Azerbaijan Republic Day is designed to confuse foreign politicians and add more credibility, and also to make such otherwise repulsive “celebrations” of a dead president's birthday somewhat attractive for Azerbaijani communities abroad.

“Ironically, during the public discussions among Azerbaijani-Americans, even the representatives of some Diaspora organizations that issued Heydar Aliyev commemorations in the past, now distance themselves from such Heydar Aliyev proclamations and consider even being suspected of involvement in such ‘Heydar Aliyev Day’ schemes to be damaging to the Azeri Diaspora’s reputation”, said AZAD chairman. “ This, plus the fact that the ‘coupling tactics’ and lobbying agents have to be used to extract Heydar Aliyev birthday observances, and that even Santa Fe mayor’s office backtracked on its own Heydar Aliyev proclamation after being provided with little more information about the issue, just shows the real status of ‘Heydar Aliyev Day’ among both Azerbaijani-Americans and the US politicians”, he concluded (Azerireport).