Don’t let authoritarians attack Americans in the heart of Washington |
It wasn’t the headline President Donald Trump wanted for the first meeting of his Board of Peace. Outside the U.S. Institute of Peace, where world leaders met, activists peacefully protested the plight of Armenian Christians held as political prisoners in Azerbaijani prisons. A kangaroo court passed life sentences to men whose only crime was winning an election Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev did not sanction. The court proceedings were farcical, closed to international observers, and marked by court-appointed translators changing the accused’s answers to false admissions of guilt.
Aliyev likely felt emboldened to act for two reasons. First, his mentor, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had done similar at Sheridan Circle in 2017 when he ordered his bodyguards to attack and beat Armenian and Kurdish Americans. And, second, after Vice President JD Vance deleted references to commemorating the Armenian Genocide out of deference to Turkey and Azerbaijani feelings, Aliyev thought he could get away with it.
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