Kayhan Unhappy with Deputy Foreign Minister's Trip to Baku: Now That Israel's Representative Is Also There; Protests Over Hijab Ban Too, He Shouldn't Have Gone!

Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi traveled to Baku yesterday to attend the seventh summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). The trip comes amid recent developments in Azerbaijan, and the presence of the Israeli regime's representative at the summit has raised serious questions and widespread ambiguity among the public and experts.

Yesterday, Kazem Gharibabadi, Deputy Minister of Legal and International Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, visited Baku to participate in the 7th Summit of the "Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia" (SICA), while the recent developments in the Republic of Azerbaijan and the simultaneous presence of the representative of the Zionist regime in this summit have created many serious questions and doubts in public opinion and expert circles.

Simultaneously with the arrival of the deputy of legal and international affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, international news sources, including Reuters, announced the official visit of Isaac Herzog, the head of the criminal and child-killing Zionist regime, to the Republic of Azerbaijan. Herzog, whose regime has committed the most heinous war crimes and military aggressions in the region, is not only meeting with Ilham Aliyev, but he is going to attend the same meeting (CICA) in which the representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran is also participating! Although Gharibabadi has stated that the purpose of this trip is to explain the positions of the regime in exposing the aggressive nature of America and the Zionist regime, but the principle of coexistence and presence in a geography that has shown the acceptance of the killers of Muslim nations is thought-provoking and requires double diplomatic sensitivities.

But the other side of this story is the unprecedented and Zionist wave of "de-Islamization and forced removal of hijab" in the Republic of Azerbaijan. In a country where more than 95% of the population is Muslim and the overwhelming majority of Shiites, the government of Baku, under the command of Ilham Aliyev and by promulgating recent repressive decrees (including decrees No. 309 and 325), has banned the Islamic headscarf in schools and has deprived oppressed female students and veiled teachers from entering educational spaces.

These anti-Islamic fascist actions occur while the public opinion and the Muslim people of Azerbaijan rightly consider the prohibition of the hijab as a direct dictate of the Zionist regime to the Aliyev government; Because the deep and security influence of the executioners of Tel Aviv in Baku is not hidden from anyone.

The paradoxical point here is that the Baku government's claim to preserve "secularism" has only become a bane for the lives of oppressed Shiite girls and teachers; Moreover, according to reliable reports, students of Jewish schools in this country easily use their religious symbols (such as kippahs) and there is no danger to the "alleged secularism of Baku"! In fact, the sharp edge of Baku's customized laicism has only targeted the Shiite and religious identity of the Azerbaijani people in order to break their deep religious and historical ties with Islamic Iran and turn this Shiite land into the security backyard of the Zionist regime.

In such a suffocating situation where the Muslim nation of Azerbaijan is being crushed under the boot of anti-Islamic policies dictated by Tel Aviv, the trip of the senior official of our country's diplomatic system to Baku without taking firm, clear and public positions in criticizing and seriously condemning this religious repression raises big question marks. The diplomatic system is the computing system of the Islamic Republic; The presence of our diplomats in events that host Zionist criminal leaders should not be interpreted by the rulers of Baku as a green light to continue suppressing Shiites and purifying relations with the vampire regime of Tel Aviv. Defending the Islamic identity of the Azerbaijani nation and clearly demarcating the influence of Zionism in the northwestern neighborhood is not a ceremonial choice, but a strategic necessity.