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AZERBAIJAN TURNS ON ONE OF ITS OWN
Washington Post
Feb 12 2013
By Will Englund, Feb 12, 2013 05:11 PM EST
The Washington Post MOSCOW - Azerbaijan's troubled efforts to
portray itself as a progressive and Western-oriented country took a
beating this week with the announcement by a pro-government political
party that it will pay $12,700 to anyone who cuts off the ear of a
75-year-old novelist.
The author is Akram Aylisli, and his crime is to have written a
novella called "Stone Dreams" that is sympathetic to Armenians and
recounts Azeri atrocities in the war between the two countries 20
years ago. Aylisli's misfortune is to have had his work published,
in Russia, at a time when an insecure regime in Azerbaijan is whipping
up anti-Armenian fervor.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has already stripped Aylisli of
his title of "People's Writer" and the pension that goes with it. His
son was fired from his job and parliament has demanded that Aylisli
submit to a DNA test to prove he's Azerbaijani. Over the weekend,
book burnings were staged around the country.
But on Monday the head of the Modern Musavat Party, Hafiz Hajiyev,
told the Turan Information Agency that the time has come for Aylisli
to be punished for portraying Azerbaijanis as savages.
"We have to cut off his ear," Hajiyev said. "This decision is to be
executed by members of the youth branch of the party."
Watchdog groups, including Human Rights Watch and the Institute
for Reporters' Freedom and Safety, denounced the threat. "I can't
believe he's a man or human being," Leila Yunus, head of the Baku-based
Institute of Peace and Democracy, said of Hajiyev. Even the Soviet era,
Yunus said, didn't feature "such horrible propaganda."
The Interior Ministry pointed out that cutting off an ear is a crime
and said it would investigate. But the government, rattled by protests
in January, has been lashing out at its opponents and, as it has in
the past, tried to distract public opinion by stirring up fears of an
Armenian threat. Although a 1994 cease-fire stopped the war between
the two former Soviet republics, Armenians still hold the territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh, and Aliyev frequently vows to take it back.
Antagonism is high, and Aylisli has fallen afoul of that. While
Azerbaijan has spent billions of dollars in oil revenue on military
equipment, efforts by the United States, Russia and France to broker a
settlement have failed. Shots across the cease-fire line are becoming
more common, and in the past week two Azeri soldiers and one Armenian
have reportedly been killed.
E. Wayne Merry, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies in Washington, said recently that
Nagorno-Karabakh is in a "pre-war" situation.
The government also has arrested two leading opposition politicians,
Tofik Agublu and Ilgar Mammadov, and charged them with fomenting
protests last month over an alleged brothel in the town of Ismayilli.
The brothel, which was burned down, reportedly was owned by the son
of one of Aliyev's cabinet ministers.
The men will be held for two months and then face trial on charges
that could bring three-year prison sentences. The arrests have been
criticized by the European Union, Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch. Azerbaijan's foreign ministry has rejected the criticism
as unfounded.
Mammadov is a member of the advisory board of a group called Revenue
Watch, which called for the immediate release of the two men. The
United States, which values Azerbaijan for its hostility to neighboring
Iran but criticizes the country's human rights practices, urged the
government to observe due process.
In an e-mail he sent to his supporters on the eve of his Feb. 4
arrest, Mammadov noted that he had been to Ismayilli, in a lull between
protests, to see for himself what was going on. "Now the government is
trying to use that fact to speculate that I have organized that massive
unrest," he wrote. He noted that his Republican Alternative party is
likely to nominate him to run for president against Aliyev in October.
Aylisli, who could not be reached Tuesday, told Radio Liberty two
weeks ago that he dwelt on Azeri atrocities in "Stone Dreams" because
that was his responsibility as an Azerbaijani writer. Let Armenian
authors, he said, write about the atrocities of their side - notably,
a 1992 massacre in the town of Khojaly, the memory of which has become
a major rallying point for aggrieved Azeris.
Aylisli also has written thinly-veiled attacks on both Aliev and his
father, Heydar Aliev, the former president, for the brutality and
corruption of their regimes. That's an image that Azerbaijan has
gone to great lengths to obscure, helped by the glitzy revival of
its capital Baku, thanks to revenue from gas and oil. Using events
like last year's Eurovision song contest in Baku, the government has
painted Azerbaijan as an outpost of flash and modernity that outshines
its neighbor, Iran.
The secular fatwa against Aylisli's ear, though, could make that
campaign an uphill battle.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/azerbaijan-turns-on-one-of-its-own/2013/02/12/977d2c8a-752b-11e2-aa12-e6cf1d31106b_story.html
Washington Post
Feb 12 2013
By Will Englund, Feb 12, 2013 05:11 PM EST
The Washington Post MOSCOW - Azerbaijan's troubled efforts to
portray itself as a progressive and Western-oriented country took a
beating this week with the announcement by a pro-government political
party that it will pay $12,700 to anyone who cuts off the ear of a
75-year-old novelist.
The author is Akram Aylisli, and his crime is to have written a
novella called "Stone Dreams" that is sympathetic to Armenians and
recounts Azeri atrocities in the war between the two countries 20
years ago. Aylisli's misfortune is to have had his work published,
in Russia, at a time when an insecure regime in Azerbaijan is whipping
up anti-Armenian fervor.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has already stripped Aylisli of
his title of "People's Writer" and the pension that goes with it. His
son was fired from his job and parliament has demanded that Aylisli
submit to a DNA test to prove he's Azerbaijani. Over the weekend,
book burnings were staged around the country.
But on Monday the head of the Modern Musavat Party, Hafiz Hajiyev,
told the Turan Information Agency that the time has come for Aylisli
to be punished for portraying Azerbaijanis as savages.
"We have to cut off his ear," Hajiyev said. "This decision is to be
executed by members of the youth branch of the party."
Watchdog groups, including Human Rights Watch and the Institute
for Reporters' Freedom and Safety, denounced the threat. "I can't
believe he's a man or human being," Leila Yunus, head of the Baku-based
Institute of Peace and Democracy, said of Hajiyev. Even the Soviet era,
Yunus said, didn't feature "such horrible propaganda."
The Interior Ministry pointed out that cutting off an ear is a crime
and said it would investigate. But the government, rattled by protests
in January, has been lashing out at its opponents and, as it has in
the past, tried to distract public opinion by stirring up fears of an
Armenian threat. Although a 1994 cease-fire stopped the war between
the two former Soviet republics, Armenians still hold the territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh, and Aliyev frequently vows to take it back.
Antagonism is high, and Aylisli has fallen afoul of that. While
Azerbaijan has spent billions of dollars in oil revenue on military
equipment, efforts by the United States, Russia and France to broker a
settlement have failed. Shots across the cease-fire line are becoming
more common, and in the past week two Azeri soldiers and one Armenian
have reportedly been killed.
E. Wayne Merry, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies in Washington, said recently that
Nagorno-Karabakh is in a "pre-war" situation.
The government also has arrested two leading opposition politicians,
Tofik Agublu and Ilgar Mammadov, and charged them with fomenting
protests last month over an alleged brothel in the town of Ismayilli.
The brothel, which was burned down, reportedly was owned by the son
of one of Aliyev's cabinet ministers.
The men will be held for two months and then face trial on charges
that could bring three-year prison sentences. The arrests have been
criticized by the European Union, Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch. Azerbaijan's foreign ministry has rejected the criticism
as unfounded.
Mammadov is a member of the advisory board of a group called Revenue
Watch, which called for the immediate release of the two men. The
United States, which values Azerbaijan for its hostility to neighboring
Iran but criticizes the country's human rights practices, urged the
government to observe due process.
In an e-mail he sent to his supporters on the eve of his Feb. 4
arrest, Mammadov noted that he had been to Ismayilli, in a lull between
protests, to see for himself what was going on. "Now the government is
trying to use that fact to speculate that I have organized that massive
unrest," he wrote. He noted that his Republican Alternative party is
likely to nominate him to run for president against Aliyev in October.
Aylisli, who could not be reached Tuesday, told Radio Liberty two
weeks ago that he dwelt on Azeri atrocities in "Stone Dreams" because
that was his responsibility as an Azerbaijani writer. Let Armenian
authors, he said, write about the atrocities of their side - notably,
a 1992 massacre in the town of Khojaly, the memory of which has become
a major rallying point for aggrieved Azeris.
Aylisli also has written thinly-veiled attacks on both Aliev and his
father, Heydar Aliev, the former president, for the brutality and
corruption of their regimes. That's an image that Azerbaijan has
gone to great lengths to obscure, helped by the glitzy revival of
its capital Baku, thanks to revenue from gas and oil. Using events
like last year's Eurovision song contest in Baku, the government has
painted Azerbaijan as an outpost of flash and modernity that outshines
its neighbor, Iran.
The secular fatwa against Aylisli's ear, though, could make that
campaign an uphill battle.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/azerbaijan-turns-on-one-of-its-own/2013/02/12/977d2c8a-752b-11e2-aa12-e6cf1d31106b_story.html