Leyla Yunusova, Azerbaijan

There will be parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan on 6 November 2005. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there have never been free and democratic elections in the republic – each election has been accompanied by falsification, police violence and numerous arrests of opposition supporters. The presidential elections in 2003 were accompanied by mass falsification and police interference in the electoral process. In the forty-eight hours after voting, 1500 people throughout the republic - mainly observers, members of the opposition election committees and their families - were detained for periods ranging between eight hours and fifteen days. Under torture, and with their relatives being held hostage, people were forced to sign false election reports. On 16 October 2003 in Baku, a demonstration against the falsification of election results was broken up by the police and the Special Forces. According to official reports, one person was beaten to death and two more were left severely disabled. In the period January-October 2004, 135 people were convicted by the Court of Grave Crimes for offences such as ‘resistance to the police’ and ‘public order offences’. 89 of them were provisionally sentenced to periods of between one and five years, and 46 were sentenced to imprisonment for periods between three and seven years. (It is noteworthy that during the presidential elections of 1998 and the parliamentary elections of 2000 – 12 and 32 people respectively were tried.)

Human rights defenders in Azerbaijan have gathered evidence of violations of current legislation and of the International Convention by representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Office of the Public Prosecutor, including the torture of prisoners (breaking their fingers and ribs, beating them with sticks, threats of rape, including threats to their family members). As a result of the work of human rights defenders in Azerbaijan, in close cooperation with international organizations, above all the OSCE and the European Court, all 46 of those sentenced to imprisonment in the aftermath of the elections were pardoned and released in May-June 2005. (However the other 89 remain provisionally sentenced.) Seven opposition leaders were acquitted of their convictions and given the right to advance their candidature for election to the country’s parliament.

However, the 2005 election campaign once again witnessed the arrests of opposition representatives. Pirali Orudzhev, a member of the opposition party ‘Musavat’, was arrested on 12 June; Rovshan Bashrili, the leader of the youth opposition organization ‘Eni Fikur’, was arrested on 1 August; and Said Nuri and Ramin Tagiev, the deputy leaders of ‘Eni Fikur’, were arrested on 12 and 13 September respectively. The men were charged with ‘organizing a coup in Azerbaijan and receiving financial assistance and instruction on how to form military units while in Poland at an international conference organized by the European Democracy Institute.’ Said Nuri, who suffers from thalassemia, could not withstand the physical and psychological pressure, and was hospitalized and released from custody on 14 September. His place was taken by Ramin Tagiev. Taking into account the experience of previous elections, a wave of mass arrests can be predicted for the week before the next elections and the week after.

Arrests and convictions on political grounds are one of the methods used by authorities to suppress the opposition and civil society representatives. In 2001, when Azerbaijan joined the European Council (EC), human rights defenders sent a list of 716 political prisoners to the EC. As a result, one of Azerbaijan’s obligations before the EC was to solve the problem of political prisoners. However, at the present time, 80 political prisoners remain imprisoned and, as the examples above illustrate, political trials are a reality.

In the media, especially on television, human rights defenders, including El’dar Zeinalov, Leila Yunus, and Arzu Abdullaeva, are accused of treason and of betraying national interests. Calls resound for human rights defenders to be tried (for treason), expelled from the country, and/or punished physically. In April 2003, the offices of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders (of which El’dar Zeinalov is the Director) and the Peace and Democracy Institute were attacked several times by crowds of ‘indignant citizens’. In April 2005, after the murder of the journalist El’mir Guseinov on 2 March, information was distributed about imminent attacks on a range of well-known defenders, including the Director of the Peace and Democracy Institute.