The Azerbaijani government should promptly establish an independent investigation into police shootings that killed one and wounded dozens of protesters in the town of Nardaran on the night of June 3-4, Human Rights Watch said today.
In a letter to Azerbaijani President Heidar Aliev, Human Rights Watch called upon the government to refrain from using unnecessary or disproportionate force in response to any unlawful acts committed during public protests. Armed police continue to blockade the town, and the situation remains tense.
The authorities have arrested more than twenty people from Nardaran since June 3 and are holding them in incommunicado detention. Relatives report that they have been provided no information as to the whereabouts of those detained or whether any criminal charges have been filed against them. Lawyers and doctors have not been permitted access. In recent years, Human Rights Watch has documented widespread torture of detainees in Azerbaijan, particularly of those held incommunicado.
In recent months residents of Nardaran, a town of 8000 people twenty-five kilometers north of Baku, have threatened to mount protests over chronic poverty, unemployment, inadequate infrastructure, unaffordable public transport, and gas and electricity shortages. On June 3 the authorities arrested eight Nardaran elders they had invited to discussions about appointing a new representative of the district council, and sent a large force of police and interior ministry troops into the town to make more arrests.
Residents of Nardaran immediately mounted demonstrations to protest the arrests. After 9:00 pm, security forces clashed with a large crowd of protesters on the main square. During a reported hour-long stand-off, hundreds of Nardaran residents threw stones and some petrol bombs, and security forces fired automatic weapons. Fifty-three-year-old Nardaran resident Alikhasan Agaev was shot dead; a dozen other inhabitants sustained serious bullet-wounds, and fifty more are said to have suffered minor bullet injuries. Security forces withdrew shortly after midnight. Domestic human rights monitors who later investigated at the scene report that sections of the town were riddled with bullet holes, and littered with spent AK-74 bullet cartridge cases.
"Azerbaijan's government has a record of responding to protests of social grievances with beatings, detentions, and show trials, but firing on protesters with assault rifles is a new low", said Elizabeth Andersen, Executive Director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "The government must conduct a serious investigation of this matter and take appropriate legal action against anyone, including members of the police, who used force unlawfully."
Many people who sustained gunshot wounds have still not had medical attention. Reports that some of the wounded and those assisting them were beaten or arrested at hospitals have discouraged others from leaving Nardaran, and a domestic rights group reports that police have prevented doctors from accessing the town.
In late 2000 and early 2001 popular discontent with the authorities' conduct of parliamentary elections, which international observers branded as fraudulent, provided a catalyst for local protests about economic and social conditions in several towns across Azerbaijan, including Sheki, Djalilabad, Agdash, Nardaran, and also by handicapped war veterans. The government's harsh repression of such protest had a chilling effect that lasted until the inhabitants of Nardaran resolved to begin new protests this January.
"President Aliev's government must learn to engage constructively with peaceful protest. With conduct of elections the way it is in Azerbaijan, peaceful protest is just about the only legitimate avenue most ordinary Azerbaijanis have left for expressing social grievances," said Elizabeth Andersen. "But this government has criminalized and repressed it."
