BRUTAL POLICE CRACKDOWNS IN AZERBAIJAN, COURTESY OF WESTERN-MADE WEAPONS
Radio Free Europe
March 13, 2013
by Arifa Kazimova and Daisy Sindelar
March 13, 2013
Hours before Azerbaijani activists gathered in Baku last weekend
for an unsanctioned protest against military violence, blogger Habib
Muntezir sent out a word of warning: “Sonic weapons with a horrible
acoustic effect may be used to disperse the protests. Use cotton or
earplugs to protect your ears.”
In the end, riot police did not resort to using the LRAD, or Long-Range
Acoustic Device, which can blast a pain-inducing 150-decibel beam of
sound to deter unruly crowds.
But the presence of the LRAD, a U.S.-manufactured device that is
gaining international popularity as a crowd-control tool, still
provoked a wave of outrage among the March 10 protesters, who say
the West should not be helping to stock the Baku regime’s arsenal.
“Hopefully, this is not a part of U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan,” one
activist wrote on Facebook in the wake of the protests, which ended
with police using tear gas and water cannons — both manufactured in
Israel — to forcibly break up the crowd.
Such clashes are expected to grow as antigovernment sentiment mounts
ahead of October elections in which the country’s autocratic leader,
Ilham Aliyev, is expected to run for a controversial third term
as president.
Aliyev has been widely criticized in the West for overseeing a deeply
corrupt, oil-fed regime that has systematically muzzled and jailed
critics to cement its hold on power.
‘Looking The Other Way’
The U.S. State Department, in its annual human-rights report, has
described Aliyev as “dominating” the executive, legislative, and
judicial branches of government, which are largely seen as serving
the will of Azerbaijan’s ruling clans.
Many, however, say such critiques ring hollow when the United States,
in practical terms, has done little to stop the persistent repression
of protesters, journalists, and human rights workers in Azerbaijan.
(Ali Hasanov, the head of the presidential administration,
unapologetically stated this week that “illegal, unsanctioned protests
will be dispersed in the future.”)
Pointing to the rough treatment of the March 10 protesters and the
unexplained disappearance of one of its organizers, Ilkin Rustamadze,
Amnesty International says it is “outrageous” that the United States
and the European Union “continue to look the other way” on Azerbaijani
rights abuses.
Natalia Nozadze, an Amnesty researcher, believes it’s time for the
international community to reconsider how it interacts with the
Azerbaijani government.
“The policy of the European Union, the U.S., and other global players
toward Azerbaijan is mainly shaped by two considerations,” she says.
“Economic interests that are based on the rich resources of Azerbaijan,
and another, very important, factor — which is often downplayed —
which is that Azerbaijan’s current government, for better or for worse,
is providing stability in the region.”
Much of the concern centers on the supply of arms to Azerbaijan. The
country has used its energy revenues to fuel a massive military buildup
amid a bellicose standoff with neighboring Armenia over the disputed
territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
At the same time, it has steadily built up an arsenal of crowd-control
devices that it is using regularly against demonstrators engaging
in antigovernment protests, including truncheons, rubber bullets,
tear gas, and water cannons.
Much of the equipment appears to have been purchased from Israel and
the United States.
Photographs of tear-gas canisters used to disperse crowds during
January’s Ismayili protests bear code numbers linking them to ISPRA,
a defense manufacturing firm based in the Israeli city of Herzelya.
Likewise, weapons experts contacted by RFE/RL said the Mercedes-mounted
water cannon used in the March 10 protests matches the shape and
design of cannons produced by the Beit Alfa Trailer Company, a known
supplier to Azerbaijan.
The LRAD, which resembles a truck-mounted satellite dish, has been
brought to Azerbaijani protest sites but has not yet been used. (The
LRAD has been used by police in neighboring Georgia since 2007, and
was also purchased by Warsaw police ahead of Poland’s co-hosting of
the Euro 2012 soccer championships.)
The acoustic device, which was developed by a California-based private
manufacturer, has since been copied by China. But photographs of the
LRAD at the March 10 protest suggest the device is of U.S. origin.
Zardust Alizadeh, a Baku-based political analyst, maintains that until
the West says otherwise, the flow of arms will continue unabated into
Azerbaijan — the only country in Eastern Europe whose arms imports
are on the rise.
Alizadeh believes human rights should be monitored by the West. “But
they’re not,” he says. “Azerbaijan does what the United States and
Europe want. So the issue is never discussed.”
The United States has several methods of withholding weapons sales to
questionable regimes abroad, both through standard control lists and
the so-called Leahy vetting process, which allows the State Department
to use human rights criteria to withhold U.S. assistance and weigh
in on defense transactions.
But the U.S.-manufactured LRAD, which is just over a decade old and
brands itself as a “communications device,” appears on no U.S. control
lists, and therefore requires no export licenses.
According to Robert Putnam, the head of media and investor relations
for the LRAD Corporation, the company has sold its equipment to
60 countries.
“Everybody that we’ve sold to is either part of a national
[government] — again, with the military, or law enforcement, or
wildlife applications,” he says. “Other than North Korea and a few
countries like that that are on the banned list of really doing
anything with, we basically look at our opportunities to sell our
technology into other countries around the world.”
Business Trumps Rights Concerns?
The press service of the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan notes that the
U.S. State Department takes into account “political” and “human rights”
conditions in making a decision on the provision of military equipment
to countries abroad.
But it adds that the LRAD is not defined as a “defense article,” and
notes that the embassy “does not typically get involved in contract
negotiations between companies and foreign countries.”
Weapons watchdog groups say business and political concerns frequently
trump human-rights considerations, even in countries like the United
States that serve as vocal standard-bearers on global rights issues.
The United States suspended its supplies of tear gas to Egypt
during the Arab Spring uprising to protest the violent crackdown
on protesters. But it has since resumed shipments, even though the
country’s new Islamist-led government has also used tear gas to subdue
peaceful protesters.
The U.K.-based Omega Research Foundation, which tracks the manufacture
and trade of military and police equipment, says that while rules
exist, they are rarely applied evenly.
“There are clearly some countries that have a persistent pattern
of rights violations which continue to receive military, security,
or police support,” the foundation says in an upcoming report on U.S.
exports of crowd control and other weapons.
It adds, “The U.S. has very good State Department annual human rights
reports, but those aren’t applied rigorously, because if they were,
then many of the export licenses would not be granted.”
Amnesty’s Nozadze echoes the sentiment, saying, “Certainly countries
have, if not a legal, then certainly a moral responsibility to ensure
the weapons produced in their country are not used for purposes of
abusing human rights.”
Certainly, crowd-control devices like tear gas, rubber bullets,
and the LRAD — which are generally categorized as “nonlethal” or
“less lethal” weapons — are seen as preferable options to guns and
live ammunition, particularly in countries where police have the
reputation of acting aggressively against protesters.
All the same, such devices are not without risk. Numerous deaths have
been recorded in association with rubber bullets, tear gas, and other
chemical sprays, which can sometimes inhibit breathing for up to half
an hour.
The Omega Research Foundation says the use of crowd-control weapons
can be “legitimate” in certain instances, but that the devices are
often misused due to inadequate training or poor policing decisions.
Dozens of protesters at the March 10 rally bore the signs of rough
treatment, and one photojournalist received an eye injury after being
knocked to the ground by a water cannon that was fired without warning.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has
worked with Azerbaijani police forces on training crowd-control
tactics, resulting in what the U.S. characterized as a “more
appropriate, proportional, and measured” response during a handful
of demonstrations in 2011.
It is unclear, however, whether such lessons will last, particularly in
what is expected to be a volatile run-up to the presidential election
in October.
The outcry over the March 10 crackdown has prompted some within
Azerbaijan to defend the police. “This nation doesn’t think,” one
person commented on Facebook. “You run to the police when something
happens to you, but now you’re cursing them. The police are protecting
the public order. That was an unsanctioned protest, and the police
were following the law.”