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Candidates’ Meetings With Voters

At the beginning of the election campaign period, in each constituency local government authorities designated meeting places for candidates to meet with voters.⁴⁰ Although many candidates have been able to meet with voters in these designated places without problems, Human Rights Watch received persistent complaints from independent and opposition candidates about police and local government authorities’ interference in carrying out meetings.⁴¹

A sitting member of parliament and candidate for the Popular Front Party, Jamil Gasanli, told Human Rights Watch that local authorities denied him permission to hold a meeting on September 21 with voters from his constituency, even though the meeting was to be held in a place previously designated by the local authorities for such meetings. According to Gasanli, approximately one hundered police officers dispersed the crowd that had gathered for the meeting and police detained two of his election campaign staff, holding them for about one-and-a-half hours in the Narimanov regional police station in Baku. On September 27, Gasanli again attempted to hold a meeting with voters, and although local authorities gave permission for the meeting and it went ahead, about twenty minutes after it began, police warned the organizers that they must not use voice amplification; the microphone had to be turned off, making it very difficult for people to hear. Gasanli said that there was a large police presence at the meeting, including police in civilian clothes, and that participants reported that police were approaching people and warning them not to attend the meeting. People were also videotaping the meeting. He said that people were afraid to attend his meetings, fearing negative consequences from the police: “Lots of people are very poor, selling nuts and herbs [in the street]... [The police] notice those who come to our meetings. They are persecuted by the police, who don’t allow them to sell their produce.”⁴²

In Ganja, Human Rights Watch documented police interference in two meetings with voters that the local Musavat party candidate wanted to hold. On October 3, Jahangir Amirov, Musavat candidate for constituency number 38 in Ganja, organized a meeting with voters in a designated meeting place on Mukhtar Hajier Street. The meeting was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. At about 5.30 p.m. police came to the building, and the meeting organizers who were outside the building saw the police speak with the landlord’s representative, who then locked the building and left. Musavat representatives then approached a member of the local election commission to ensure that the door would be opened for the meeting. The landlord’s representative, however, did not want to open the door. Police gathered outside the building, and when Amirov tried to hold the meeting in front of the building, police told those gathered to disperse.⁴³ The next day, Amirov tried to hold another meeting at 81 Nizami Street, a place designated by the local authorities for such meetings. Again the meeting organizers had difficulties getting the key, the building supervisor  finally telling one of them that the police had told him not to give the key to them. About ten police officers were in front of the building, and when Amirov tried to hold the meeting in the street, police surrounded the participants, interrupted the meeting, and tried to detain a seventy-two–year-old man who was videotaping the events; they only desisted when two OSCE observers intervened.⁴⁴

In Lenkoran, a candidate for the National Unity Party, Hajibaba Azimov, told Human Rights Watch of interference when he tried to hold a meeting in the village of Darguba on October 3. The designated area was in the grounds of a local school. However, when he and his supporters arrived, they found that the school authorities had closed all the doors, even to the courtyard area. Azimov had to hold the meeting in a nearby cafe.⁴⁵