The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) sent an open letter to state legislators, and called upon them to "take a stand against foreign interference in American civic life by corrupt Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev," Asbarez reports.
"I am writing to alert you that Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan (an oil-rich and corrupt one-family dictatorship), is pressuring state legislatures across our country into joining his angry and increasingly violent attacks upon his Christian Armenian neighbors.
"President Aliyev is best known around the world for the scandal surrounding his pardon and promotion of a convicted axe-murderer, after this confessed killer happily admitted to hacking to death an Armenian student (while he slept) during a NATO peace program in Hungary. This shameful act was sharply condemned by President Obama. Azerbaijan’s human rights record, among the worst in the world, is documented annually in our State Department's human rights reports.
"It is truly a tribute to our great American democratic tradition that even a regime as flagrantly corrupt as Ilham Aliyev's is allowed to operate freely within our open society. But that does not mean that American citizens need to remain silent in the face of meddling by foreign leaders who neither respect our rights nor share our values - especially when they try to export their intolerance to our shores.
"It is in the spirit of our American democracy that I ask you to ensure that this foreign dictator is not allowed to hijack your state legislature in his hateful campaign against the Republic of Armenia and the free people of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic," ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian specifically wrote in the open letter.