BBC: Azerbaijani authoritarian government glorifies the murderer Ramil
Safarov and persecutes writer Aylisli
16:05 01/06/2013 » REGION
Over the last two years dozens of journalists, opposition activists
and bloggers have been arrested in Azerbaijan, accused of possessing
drugs or weapons or charged with hooliganism, the BBC correspondent
Damien McGuinness reports.
`But according to human rights groups, the charges are trumped up – an
authoritarian government’s attempt to stamp out any Arab Spring-style
uprising, they say. And now, faced with presidential elections in
October, the authorities are accused of clamping down even more
heavily,’ the article reads.
As the author notes participants in anti-government demonstrations in
the city centre face heavy fines worth more than the yearly earning of
many Azeris. And tough new libel laws are criminalising criticism
online.
`In Baku’s Fountain Square, I meet a young man, Araz, who tells me how
police violently broke up a peaceful protest he took part in here.
Araz says police beat him and then sprayed tear gas into his eyes
while he was being held by another officer,’ the author says.
As the young man says, `Somebody has to do something at some point. If
you want big changes, at least one generation has to sacrifice itself.
And I think that we are that generation,’ he says.
`President Ilham Aliyev, whose family has ruled for decades, looks set
to win October’s elections. But now there are signs that
dissatisfaction is spreading beyond the traditionally small opposition
circles of young, digitally minded youth activists,’ the article
reads.
According to the author recent protests have also involved middle-aged
mothers, outraged by the unexplained deaths and abuse of their sons
conscripted into the Azeri army. `And there are suspicions that the
government is trying to counter this growing dissent, and bolster
support, by appealing to nationalist sentiment,’ McGuinness writes.
“I think the president’s family is using the nationalist card to
distract people from the real problems, such as corruption,” says
investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova. “They need an external
enemy to keep people under control.”
And in Azerbaijan, that enemy is Armenia. `Earlier this year, just as
the country was seeing an unusually high number of anti-government
protests, a scandal erupted over an Azeri book which portrayed
Armenians sympathetically. Fortuitous timing to distract from the
unrest, whispered government critics. The novel had actually been
published months before,’ the article notes.
It also reads that the author of the book, the renowned Azeri writer
Akram Aylisli, was stripped of his literary awards and pension by
President Aliyev. His books were publicly burned and protesters
gathered outside his home chanting death threats – demonstrations
which the authorities did not disperse. This once-revered writer
suddenly found himself castigated as a national villain.
Azeri soldier Ramil Safarov, on the other hand, was turned into the
nation’s hero. He chopped the head off a sleeping Armenian with an axe
in 2004 in Hungary, the BBC writes. Last year he returned to
Azerbaijan, where he was supposed to serve out the rest of a life
sentence. Only he did not. He was given a hero’s welcome, was pardoned
by the president and promoted to the rank of major.
“Of course he’s a hero,” one of Ramil Safarov’s neighbours told the
BBC correspondent. The other one said Armenians are not human. “I
would have done the same.”
“I think the leaders just love this conflict, they embrace it,” the
journalist Khadija Ismayilova believes. “The right thing to do right
now would be to embrace Armenian citizens in Azerbaijan. But that
would end the conflict. And the government doesn’t want that.”
Source: Panorama.am