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Azerbaijan: The Government Campaign Against Dissent

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  • Azerbaijan: The Government Campaign Against Dissent

    International Relations & Security Network, Zurich
    Dec 28 2011


    Azerbaijan: The Government Campaign Against Dissent


    While 2011 saw activists and the opposition challenging the government
    in Azerbaijan, public response was muted and unrest kept in check. The
    number of political prisoners increased, and looks set to rise into
    2012.

    By Karl Rahder for ISN Insights

    Azerbaijan's Arab Spring Moment

    It was the Arab Spring that never happened: A series of demonstrations
    early this year in Azerbaijan that were meant to trigger new elections
    and the resignation of President Ilham Aliyev, son and successor to
    former President Heydar Aliyev. As the movement gained a small measure
    of momentum, one opposition leader warned in January that if the
    Azerbaijani government did not agree to new, democratic elections,
    `the people will rise up.'

    `By then,' he said, `it will be too late for the authorities, and
    events will develop in accordance with the Tunisian and Egyptian
    scenarios.'

    Rise up they did not. After a series of demonstrations that lasted
    into June -some hastily organized by opposition parties and others
    arranged via Facebook - political life in Azerbaijan was much as it
    had been prior to 2011's revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere
    in the Muslim world.

    The authorities' response to the unrest, revealed much about the
    government's fears and its strategy. As in neighboring Armenia,
    opponents of the ruling elite sought to ignite widespread protest,
    modeling themselves after the Arab Spring. But unlike the
    demonstrations in Armenia (where something approximating democratic
    pluralism is much more in evidence than in Azerbaijan), the rallies
    were relatively small and the government response was swift and harsh.
    The `Great People's Day' of 11 March - organized on Facebook by a
    small group of Azeri activists - saw a meager turnout, a quick roundup
    of protesters by police and a number of arrests. More rallies followed
    in March and April, with hundreds of arrests and in some cases,
    criminal prosecution.

    Despite claims by one respected analyst that there are `no credible
    reports or video material that would document excessive force being
    used by police,' widely available video shows police roughing up
    demonstrators and in one instance even shattering a bus window with a
    baton in order to douse protesters (who had been herded into the bus
    by police) with pepper spray.

    Those charged and convicted with `creating public disorder' and
    similar criminal offenses connected to protests in April include
    prominent Musavat Party figure Arif Hajili and nine others, all of
    whom are now serving time in prison. In May, Harvard alumnus and
    Facebook activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev was sentenced to two years for
    evading military service, a charge that he and many human rights
    organizations labeled as politically motivated. Also convicted - on
    drug possession charges - was Facebook activist Jabbar Savalan; he is
    now serving a prison sentence of two years and six months.

    The response from the international community has been that of
    indignation, with the EU expressing concern over the convictions of
    Savalan and Hajiyev as well as the bulldozing of the Institute for
    Peace and Democracy in August. Amnesty International issued a
    statement calling the charges against Savalan `trumped up .'

    A Two-tier Strategy

    The authorities' response implies a carefully constructed program of
    `general harassment and targeted prosecution' in which opposition
    parties and their leaders are undermined and marginalized through use
    of the legal system, occasional police violence, and `black
    propaganda' campaigns.

    Harassment of political opponents

    The `harassment' component is designed in part to demoralize the two
    major opposition parties - continuing a long-term project that has
    intensified since the death of Heydar Aliyev in late 2003 - and to
    undercut any latent public support that might emerge for a revitalized
    opposition.

    Arastun Orujlu, chairman of the Baku-based East-West Center, told ISN
    earlier this year that the government had begun a shift from
    informally dismantling the opposition to something more concrete.

    `Now their goal is to destroy the opposition formally,' he said.

    In this, they have all but succeeded. Efforts in the past year or two
    have included branding the Musavat Party `Armenian collaborators' (a
    theme during last year's parliamentary elections) and adding
    `jihadist' to the list of other sins that Popular Front Party chairman
    Ali Kerimli is routinely charged with.

    In late March, for instance, young demonstrators at a rally sanctioned
    by the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party (YAP) gleefully displayed
    photo-shopped posters of Kerimli wearing a keffiyeh and clutching an
    AK-47. This was a new and typically crude tactic, complementing two
    other favorite accusations that have been hurled like a cudgel at
    Kerimli over the years: He colludes with Armenia and he is gay - a
    deliberately explosive charge designed to alienate more conservative
    elements of Azerbaijani society.

    Increasingly, these campaigns utilize the Internet, and sometimes take
    place via the same social media channels that were used to organize
    the anti-government protests earlier this year.

    In early March as the protests threatened to mushroom in Baku, the
    website, qaynar.info, perceived by many to be run by pro-government
    youth, posted a page identifying prominent Azeris who had Armenian
    Facebook friends. Anti-Armenian feelings still run deep in Azerbaijan
    since Armenia gained control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region after a
    bitter war in 1994. The page is still active as of mid-December 2011.

    Some of the comments on the page were particularly vindictive, such as
    those of one reader who ranted that the Azeris who were singled out
    `should be killed, they should be hanged in the center of the city.'

    Thankfully, these comments were somewhat balanced by readers who said
    things like, `may god protect us from `patriots' like you. [J]ust try
    to do what Adnan Hajizada has done for this country, then maybe you
    can discuss the [A]rmenians on his friends list. [Y]ou are not doing
    anything for your country with this `patriotism."

    The Armenian theme was also served up by Baku State University rector
    Abel Maherremov, who claimed on ANS TV (formerly the only bastion of
    editorial independence on Azerbaijani television) that `Armenians'
    were behind the March 11th protests.

    In a similar vein, pro-government blogger Rauf Mardiyev was
    appropriately shocked after his discovery that six Armenians were
    listed as early supporters of the Great People's Day on Facebook,
    tainting the event beyond redemption.

    This 'Armenian connection' was apparently an agreed-upon talking
    point: YAP Deputy Executive Secretary Mubariz Gurbanli was
    subsequently quoted in a piece alleging that many Armenians had joined
    the 11 March Facebook page, some posing as Azeris.

    Hedging their bets in case the `anything on social media that we
    disagree with is tainted' message wasn't quite clear enough,
    pro-government television stations in Azerbaijan ran a series of
    programs during the spring on the alleged causal link between the use
    of Facebook and mental illness.

    Targeted prosecutions: Setting an example

    `Targeted prosecutions' consist of the prosecutor's office bringing
    charges against a small number of significant figures - opposition
    political figure X, independent journalist Y or activist Z - who have
    taken very public stands against the government or written about
    corruption or other controversial topics. The charges and convictions
    of the few serve as a cautionary example for others who may then think
    twice before challenging the legitimacy of the government.

    Favorite criminal charges include drug possession, hooliganism or, in
    one ironic case a parliamentary candidate accused of 'interfering with
    election officials'. Suspects are then detained prior to trial while
    an `investigation' takes place. Family members find that they are
    suddenly fired from their jobs: Facebook activist Elnum Majidli,
    currently residing in France, informed ISN Insights that his father
    was fired, and according to an article from the Index on Censorship
    his mother has been told by her supervisors at work that they are
    under pressure to fire her. The authorities, he told ISN, are
    `listening to our telephone conversations and watching our home in
    Baku.'

    The next step is to disbar defense counsel - thus sabotaging the
    defendants' cases. Among those disbarred this year while involved in
    politically sensitive cases were Osman Kazimov, Khalid Bagirov, and
    Elchin Namazov. Finally, the defendants are convicted, an outcry from
    the international community ensues, and eventually the cases reach the
    Azerbaijani Supreme Court, which invariably rules in favor of the
    prosecution.

    On November 29th of this year, the Azerbaijani Supreme Court upheld a
    lower court's conviction of Savalan; on December 6th, it upheld the
    conviction of Bakhtiyar Hajiyev.

    Most of those convicted can look forward to serving a substantial
    portion of their sentences, though the president has a habit of
    commuting the sentences of political prisoners, as happened when Adnan
    Hajizade and Emin Milli - the `donkey bloggers ' - were released
    earlier this year.

    It's possible - even likely - that President Aliyev may grant similar
    commutations prior to the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in
    Baku in late May. Azerbaijan's 2011 Eurovision victory may well be a
    blessing for Azerbaijan's political prisoners, as the government may
    find it embarrassing to have to explain its penchant for locking up
    Facebook activists.

    Implied Fear

    The desired outcome behind the government's strategy is the stamping
    out of any emerging opposition movement that could garner public
    support and lead to the sort of instability that brought an end to the
    rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, unlikely as that may be: A
    2010 opinion poll administered by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and
    another commissioned by the Caspian Information Centre in 2011
    indicated strong support for the president, although opponents of the
    Aliyev government claim that the methodology of the polling was
    invalid.

    The fear implied by the government's actions is curious, since violent
    police tactics at demonstrations, a shrill propaganda campaign against
    the formal opposition as well as Facebookers, and convictions in court
    on phony charges suggest that the government actually agrees with the
    major charge leveled against it by the Musavat and Popular Front
    parties: Azerbaijan is an authoritarian state where divergent
    political voices are not tolerated. As Musavat Party chairman Isa
    Gambar told a US embassy official in 2007, "If the opposition is so
    genuinely weak, what is the government afraid of? Why can't we be
    shown on TV? Why can't we meet? Why are they arresting journalists?"

    More trials and convictions are in the offing: Journalist Avaz
    Zeynalli is still being held prior to trial while police investigate
    allegations of extortion brought against him by a pro-government
    member of parliament. (Her chief advisor has ignored repeated requests
    for comment from ISN.) If the pattern holds, his attorney will soon be
    disbarred, Zeynalli will be found guilty and given a stiff sentence:
    Sentencing guidelines for extortion range from seven to ten years.

    An essentially sultanistic petro-state, Azerbaijan sees little
    incentive to introduce meaningful democratic reforms. The country's
    rulers, presiding over government-approved `opposition' parties in
    parliament and an authentic opposition that has now been virtually
    eliminated, will continue the pattern of harassment and targeted
    prosecution simply because it works. Social media tools such as
    Facebook and Youtube may be marshaled against the government by
    liberal activists, but the authorities and their allies have shown
    they can use these very tools, albeit in a somewhat clumsy fashion, to
    wage their own war against the opposition.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Karl Rahder was the South Caucasus correspondent for ISN Security
    Watch and currently writes the Caucasus Blog for the Foreign Policy
    Association. Aside from his work as a journalist, he also teaches
    International Relations at universities in the US and the former
    Soviet Union.

    Editor's note:
    Just before publication, ISN learned that Jabbar Savalan, mentioned in
    this article, was released from prison in a general amnesty. He was
    the only political prisoner among the 92 convicts to be granted
    clemency.

    Publisher
    International Relations and Security Network (ISN)

    http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/ISN-Insights/Detail?lng=en&id=135451&contextid734=135451&contex tid735=135437&tabid=135437&dynrel=4888caa0-b3db-1461-98b9-e20e7b9c13d4,0c54e3b3-1e9c-be1e-2c24-a6a8c7060233

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