Azerbaijani lobby is more active in Germany - says German journalist
Barbara Oertel, Foreign Policy Editor at Tageszeitung Daily, visited Armenian for the fourth time this year. She has managed to get acquainted with the country’s sights and study Armenians. “Armenia has great potential for development but several factors hinder that development. Those include the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenian historical monuments left in Turkey and the Eurasian Economic Union, which I doubt that will give anything good to Armenia,” says Barbara Oertel. The German journalist wants to learn Armenian. She already knows Russia and often reads Russian newspapers and follows the work of Russian TV companies. In reply to the question whether freedom of speech and expression is protected in Germany, the journalist said, “According to the index of freedom of expression, Germany always takes middle positions in the rankings of a leading company. By and large, I can say that freedom of expression is honoured in Germany but we fight for its protection every day. Attempts are made to undermine the right to freedom of expression for some economic reasons. Some companies and politicians try to pressurize journalists and newspapers if they do not like the article written by them. No matter who is in power, our aim is to regulate the power and become counterbalance to it. We want to identify and show the problems in order to change something. If there is on open wound, we point at it,” said Barbara Oertel. She perfectly understands the political aspects of the post-Soviet countries and says they frequently speak about the Armenian Genocide. The German journalist stresses that some counties adopt draft resolutions to recognize the 1915 Genocide in order to receive the votes of Armenians living in their country. At the same time, she notes that Azerbaijani lobby is very active in Germany and spends large amounts of money which cannot be said about the Armenian lobby. Barbara Oertel has never been to Azerbaijan.
