I am writing to urge you to speak out against the ongoing campaign against Azerbaijani human rights defenders and nongovernmental human rights organizations, and to take immediate measures to stop it.
During the past week several of Azerbaijan’s leading human rights defenders and their families have been subjected to numerous incidents of physical harassment and intimidation, which followed two months of attacks against them in the mass media. We ask that you ensure that law enforcement agencies take appropriate measures against the perpetrators of violent acts and provide security to the human rights defenders targeted by the campaign. This is an urgent matter, as we learned yesterday that a private security company was obliged to withdraw its guard from the office of the Human Rights Center of Azerbaijan, one of the chief targets of the attacks, on instructions from the Ministry of National Security.
Attacks of April 23-28
An ANS television program, aired on April 22, immediately preceded the attacks. It criticized Eldar Zeynalov, chair of the Human Rights Center of Azerbaijan (HRCA) for comments attributed to him during a trip he was making at that time to Armenia and Nagorny-Karabakh, where he was to take part in an all-Caucasus forum of nongovernmental organizations. Two Azerbaijani civil society representatives took part in the television program, one of whom allegedly commented that people should make it uncomfortable for Eldar Zeynalov to walk on the street. The program broadcast Eldar Zeynalov’s home telephone number, after which his family immediately began to receive threatening telephone calls.
On April 23 a group of up to fifty people—members of the “Popular Front” party led by Gudrat Gasanguliev—picketed HRCA’s office in Baku. The crowd threw eggs at the walls and windows and emptied garbage outside the entrance door. They dispersed when police officers arrived. The group left a written document outside the office calling for Eldar Zeynalov to be prosecuted for treason.
That afternoon, a group from the nongovernmental Organization for the Liberation of Karabakh (OLK) picketed HRCA’s office. Reportedly, they banged on the door and windows of the office. Zeynalov called the police, who later allowed several of the protestors and camera crews into his office. During heated discussion there, one of the protestors threatened to blow up Eldar Zeynalov, the office, and himself. Police officers resolved the situation by escorting all participants in the exchange to a police station.
The OLK was among several groups that picketed the HRCA office on April 24. Others were “Popular Front” led by Gudrat Gasanguliev, and two other political parties, Muasir Musavat and Umid. OLK members poured chlorine down the steps leading to the office basement. Others threw eggs, broke two windows, and burned on a wooden cross photographs of Zeynalov and of the Karabakh-Armenian leader Arkady Gukasian.
On April 25, a group of roughly thirty people bearing the flag of the governing Yeni Azerbaycan party picketed the HRCA office at midday, throwing eggs. When Mekhdi Mekhdiev, director of the Human Rights Resource Center, objected, two men in the crowd began to assault him, but were stopped by police. That morning Mekhdiev had closed his office after receiving a telephone call threatening that it would be attacked.
On April 26, a group of about ten youths briefly picketed the HRCA office, and burned an Armenian flag.
On April 28, about thirty people demonstrated outside the office of the Institute of Peace and Democracy, another nongovernmental human rights organization. The crowd—presumed to be from Yeni Azerbaycan—threw eggs, tried unsuccessfully to force the entrance door, and left after forty minutes. On the same day, Zeynalov’s neighbors reportedly attacked members of his family, accusing them of being Armenian. His sister-in-law alleged that they twisted her arm and threw potted plants at her and her father.
In all of these incidents, demonstrators reportedly shouted that the human rights defenders were Armenians and traitors, and demanded that they leave or be expelled from Azerbaijan.
Police response
The police response to the assaults has been ambivalent. They have to date contained the violence, but they have not investigated or prosecuted any of those who committed acts of violence or vandalism. On some occasions the police have obliged picketers to leave, and on other occasions they have stood by while crowds hurled eggs and other projectiles. This was the case, for example, on April 24: police intervened only after the attack was over, to bring in cleaners to tidy away its traces.
Police have failed to provide security to the staff of the offices under assault. They even refused to provide a police guard to protect HRCA in exchange for remuneration, although such arrangements with other Baku-based organizations are common. On April 25 HRCA concluded a one-month contract with a private security company. When HRCA inquired as to why the guard had not appeared yesterday morning, the company explained that the Ministry of National Security had instructed them to stop guarding the HRCA.
In an April 24 news broadcast, the Lider television station reported that the Ministry of the Interior planned to press criminal charges against Eldar Zeynalov, but provided no further detail. On April 27 Minister of the Interior Ramil Usubov, after three days of silence, told journalists that the Ministry had no basis on which to arrest Eldar Zeynalov, and said that only the Ministry of National Security could make a determination in such cases.
The Role of State and Pro-government Media
Both state television and several private television stations that broadcast from the government’s perspective—such as ANS, Lider, and Space TV—have played an important role in initiating and sustaining the last week’s incidents. As noted above, the April 22 ANS program that broadcast Eldar Zeynalov’s home telephone number appears to have triggered the physical intimidation campaign. On April 24 an ANS news bulletin reportedly announced that protestors were due to assemble outside the HRCA office in an hour’s time, which may have served to encourage participants in the attack that subsequently occurred.
News reports have vilified Eldar Zeynalov and Leyla Yunus, chair of the Institute of Peace and Democracy, and have portrayed the attacks on their offices as manifestations of public outrage. Viewers have been told that there should be no place for these people in Azerbaijan, and that they are Armenians, with the apparent aim of stirring ethnic bias. Some television broadcasts have spliced material about Eldar Zeynalov with archive footage of the corpses of Azerbaijanis, killed by Armenian forces.
Official encouragement of attacks on human rights defenders
The broader media context for this week’s attacks was set in February and March, when state and pro-government mass media frequently attacked several human rights defenders, chiefly Eldar Zeynalov and Leyla Yunus, accusing them of betraying national interests in favor of Armenia. Broadcasts and newspaper articles reportedly called for reprisals against them, income audits, criminal investigation, and expulsion from Azerbaijan.
On February 24 Ilham Aliev, a member of parliament and vice president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, gave this campaign this official imprimatur, denouncing domestic opponents of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline project. He spoke of the necessity to “take measures against” human rights defenders who had criticized the project. Although domestic critics of the project have objected to it largely on grounds of potential negative economic, social, or ecological impacts, he reportedly characterized their opposition as sabotage undertaken on behalf of Armenia, and named them “accomplices of our enemy.”
Yeni Azerbaycan has played a leading role in the incidents of physical intimidation during the past week. In an interview published by Sharg newspaper on April 25, Bahar Muradova, a member of parliament and of Yeni Azerbaycan’s political council stated the party’s plans to picket the HRCA office that day, and to do the same subsequently at the office of Leyla Yunus. They threw eggs at both offices.
Among the other groups that have picketed the HRCA office, the “Popular Front” led by Gudrat Gasanguliev is widely perceived to be a pro-government grouping. Its close connection with your government became apparent in January 2003. At that time, the Ministry of Justice registered it as the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party, thereby displacing the “reformist” wing of the Popular Front, which is an opposition party, and revoking the latter’s registration. This maneuver drew protest within Azerbaijan and criticism from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. On January 22 you reinstated the opposition party’s registration.
The latest events are the latest in a series of government actions taken since the middle of last year, which appear aimed at deterring human rights reporting in Azerbaijan. These have included unfavorable amendments made to the law on grants adopted in May 2002, and attempts to deter international and domestic human rights bodies from giving a full evaluation of the violence in Nardaran of June 2002.
We urge you reconsider this approach, and to begin with stopping the campaign of violence against Azerbaijan’s human rights defenders. I thank you for your attention to this urgent matter and welcome your response.
Yours sincerely,
Elizabeth Andersen
Executive Director
Europe and Central Asia division
cc: Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State
Dr. Condoleezza Rice, U.S. National Security Advisor
Martinez Cassan, PACE Rapporteur on Azerbaijan
Andreas Gross, PACE Rapporteur on Azerbaijan
Ambassador Hafiz Pashayev, Ambassador of Azerbaijan to the United States
Ambassador Ross Wilson, Ambassador of the United States to Azerbaijan
Michael Townshend, BP Vice President
