Uruguay public media president apologizes for state-run radio’s coverage of Azerbaijani election

President of Uruguayan public media (SECAN, National Audiovisual Communications Service) Gerardo Sotelo has apologized after Uruguay’s state-run radio covered Azerbaijan’s February 7 presidential election and justified Ilham Aliyev’s authoritarian regime.

“Although there was no intention to take sides, the form of coverage of such a controversial and painful story was highly inappropriate. Please accept our apologies for what happened,” Sotelo said, following the public condemnation by the Armenian National Committee of Uruguay.

“Was Uruguay’s public media really put at the service of a dictatorship that just recently committed genocide to justify its fake ‘election’?” the Cause Armenia board wondered.

On February 8, a journalist of the Uruguayan public media who accepted Baku’s invitation to cover the “election” and visit the territories of the Republic of Artsakh occupied by Azerbaijan, made a report for Radio Uruguay. The report repeated the fake information of the Azerbaijani regime and justified ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Armenian population of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

The coverage was highlighted by Azerac, the official Azeri agency, as part of a press operation conducted to counter criticism of the lack of electoral transparency.

“We protect and use the freedom of speech that exists in Uruguay, not in Azerbaijan. We believe that the public media cannot but criticize the scenario written by the propagandists of the regime that committed genocide and seeks to clean up its image,” the Cause Armenia board concluded.