Azerbaijan writer targeted over `pro-Armenia’ book

Daily Times, Pakistan
Feb 18 2013

Azerbaijan writer targeted over `pro-Armenia’ book

BAKU: A prominent Azerbaijani writer has become the target of a
state-approved campaign of intimidation after he published a novella
he says was intended to build bridges with arch-foe Armenia.

Akram Aylisli’s `Stone Dreams’, which depicts relations between ethnic
Azerbaijanis and Armenians in Azerbaijan, sparked outrage in
Azerbaijan for what critics say is a pro-Armenian presentation of the
bloody conflict between the ex-Soviet neighbours.

The novella’s December publication in the Russian-language magazine,
Friendship of Peoples, has been followed by a hostile campaign of
intimidation against its author. The most extreme phase of Aylisli’s
nightmare started when the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan party demanded on
January 31 that the 75-year-old writer repudiate his book and
apologise before the nation. `The Azerbaijani people must express
public hatred’ towards Aylisli, a high-ranking presidency official
said.

Days later crowds started regularly gathering outside Aylisli’s home,
burning his effigies and shouting: `Akram leave the country now!’ and
`Shame on you!’

At its February 1 plenary, Azerbaijan’s parliament condemned the book,
with some lawmakers saying Aylisli should take a DNA test to prove his
ethnicity.

With a stroke of a presidential pen, Azerbaijan’s strongman leader
Ilham Aliyev this month stripped Aylisli of his honorary title of
`People’s Writer’, his medals and a presidential pension.

Aylisli said his wife and son were forced to resign from their jobs.
Televised auto-da-fes of the writer’s books are being held across the
country.

The pro-government Yeni Musavat party leader, Hafiz Gadjiyev, has
publicly pledged a $12,000 reward to anyone who would cut off
Aylisli’s ear.

`The Azerbaijani authorities have an obligation to protect Akram
Aylisli,’ Human Rights Watch said in a statement last week. `Instead,
they have led the effort to intimidate him, putting him at risk with a
campaign of vicious smears and hostile rhetoric.’ `Stone Dreams’
describes violence against ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijan in the 1920s
and in the late 20th century, when Baku and Yerevan went to war over
Azerbaijan’s now Armenian-controlled enclave of Nagorny Karabakh.

Critics accuse Aylisli of only describing the sufferings of the
Armenians and ignoring atrocities committed by the Armenians against
his own people. `Aylisli’s work moves us away from the day of
reconciliation; an one-sidedly written work can’t help settling the
conflict,’ said opposition Musavat party leader Isa Gambar.

But in an interview with AFP, Aylisli said his book is `a hand of
friendship, stretched out to the Armenians’. `I tell a story of an
Azerbaijani, who becomes a victim while saving an Armenian. It’s all
about high moral values and human qualities,’ he said, rejecting
accusations of being unpatriotic. afp