Journalists protest in Azerbaijan over probe of editor’s death
April 9, 2005 – 14:55
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – About 700 journalists and rights activists
rallied in Azerbaijan’s capital Saturday to protest what they call
authorities’ failure to fully investigate the death of an opposition
magazine editor and bring his killers to justice.
Police afterward detained seven activists from youth organization Yeni
Fikir, or New Thought, for distributing leaflets at the unauthorized
rally in the oil-rich Caspian Sea state, their leader, Ruslan Bashirli,
told The Associated Press by cellphone from a police station.
A police spokesman confirmed the detention but gave no further
information.
Elmar Huseinov, founder and editor of the opposition magazine Monitor,
was found dead in the lobby of his apartment building in Baku on
March 2. Police said he was shot four times in the heart and the side.
The opposition has blamed the former Soviet republic’s leadership for
Huseinov’s killing. President Ilham Aliev has countered by calling
the murder a provocation for unrest.
At the protest meeting opposite the city’s National Academy of
Sciences, the participants shouted “Freedom” and “Freedom of Speech.”
They then went the cemetery where the journalist is buried, and the
head of the country’s journalists’ union, Azer Hasrat, read a petition
calling for a speedy investigation into Huseinov’s killing and the
end to official pressure on the media.
The journalist’s widow, Rushana Huseinova, told the AP that the
government was trying to shift responsibility for the killing on
“foreign powers.”
“From the start of the investigation you could feel efforts to put
the blame onto any other country, Russia, Georgia, the United States,
but not on the Azerbaijani government,” she said.
An international press freedom group on Friday urged Azerbaijan to
find Huseinov’s killers, saying that would show that the country
valued press freedoms and democracy.
Robert Menard, who heads the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders,
said Interior Minister Rameli Usubovi told him in a meeting Friday
that the murder had a political motive, possibly to destabilize the
country. He suggested foreign countries, such as Azerbaijan’s regional
rival, Armenia, may have had a role.
Tension between the government and the opposition has increased since
the October 2003 election, in which Aliev replaced his father, longtime
leader Geidar, as president in a vote the opposition said was marred
by fraud. Several opposition leaders, including newspaper editors,
have been sentenced to prison over unrest that followed the election.