Seeking your opinions!

If you have been following the case of the imprisoned bloggers in Azerbaijan, you probably know that they were released a little more than a week ago. First, Emin Milli was released. A few days later, Adnan Hacizade was released.

Of course, this can be interpreted as a cynical move by the government of Azerbaijan, occurring shortly after an election that was widely condemned as grossly unfair.

At the moment, I am collecting information on the use of "social" or "new media" in the effort to free Emin and Adnan. I am very interested in the opinions of all people who followed this case. If this is you, please fill out this survey. Если более удобно читать по-русски, вот русский вариант. Azerbaijani? Here you are!

Real life for women in the countryside

RFE/RL recently posted a find article on the reality of village life for most Azerbaijani women. It fit with what I saw when I was traveling around that country a couple of years ago.

Governance as a family business

Here's an excellent article from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The Aliyev family is essentially shameless as it methodically wrings profit from Azerbaijan.

Life in Azerbaijan today

Here's a brief clip that sums up the situation in Azerbaijan.

An interview with the Nagorno-Karabakh president

Karabakh: ‘Free State’ - Transitions Online

A U.N. rights expert recently made his first visit to Azerbaijan and deplored the lack of progress in ongoing peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Walter Kalin, the secretary-general’s representative on the human rights of IDPs, said progress is needed to help internally displaced people in the region find a sustainable solution to their situation.

I don't know what the solution to this problem is, but I do know how destructive this unsettled problem is to the whole region.

Another mosque threatened with closure

The Radio Liberty website is carrying news today of the closure of Sunni mosque outside Azerbaijan. The government's relationship with organized Islam is complicated. On one hand, the government sometimes has seemed eager to curry favor with religious authorities. On the other hand, it has on occasion acted repressively, especially against sects such as the Wahhabis. I think the guiding principle is constant across all authoritarian states. Any rival power center will be viewed suspiciously if not hostilely by the central government.

Azerbaijani police in action

Real estate genius?

The latest evidence of the wealth accruing to the ruling family in Azerbaijan has been published on the Internet. This article by the Times details the real estate riches acquired by Heydar Aliyev, the 12-year-old son of the current president of Azerbaijan. Nine luxury properties in Dubai had been bought during a two-week period last year when the youth spent $44 million. In all, the president's children have real estate holdings of about $75 million.

This is wonderful. It's very important that young people be taught how to invest and save. The president is setting a fine example for other parents in Azerbaijan, encouraging his son's thrift and enterprise.

President Ilham Aliyev indeed sets a very notable example, and apparently, it has an effect. The country, after all, is recognized for its stubbornly high level of corruption.

It's also recognized for its high level of income disparity. While the president's son is investing millions of dollars in Dubai, the yearly gross national income per capita is roughly $666.

(As it happened, I needed to talk with someone in Azerbaijan this morning. The journalist I was contacting, however, couldn't talk because her newsroom was facing a momentary crisis. The news outlet's website was facing very strange and serious problems. Very mysterious. Perhaps the president does not want to share the news about his financially savvy son?)

Chapter Three

Buna was angry. Her head was not clear enough to know much more than that – but she was angry. She didn’t really know where she was. She didn’t know who this woman was. She didn’t know why she was talking to this woman, or why she was dressed in this absurd, thin dressing gown, but she knew she was angry. She was angry, and her head hurt.

Buna was not aware of the large bandage on her head, or the dried blood that clotted in her hair. She was arguing with main doctor in the hospital that she should leave immediately, because her children needed her at home. She was aware that she had no children, but she had thought about these non-existent children, and the one young daughter who died so soon after birth, that they had achieved some measure of reality.

“Who is going to feed them? Answer me that!” she snapped at the doctor, her voice hoarse and unsteady, despite her anger.

Tatiana Semonova, an angular woman with hair dyed an unnatural shade of red, was the chief doctor at the psychiatric ward. She had worked at the hospital for 30 years. She never liked alcoholics or drug addicts, and at this point in her career she felt a positive revulsion toward them. This woman with an ugly head wound was about 24 hours away from her last drink. The only reason she was not now shaking with the delirium tremens was because of the strong tranquilizers that had been injected into her with the greatest of difficulty two hours ago. From the way Buna was acting, Tatiana considered that another dose of tranquilizers was necessary.

“If you tell me where you live, we will make sure that your children are cared for. But you are in no condition to go out on the street. We simply can’t allow it. Do you know where you were when we found you?”

This question baffled Buna. It did not make her less angry, but it distracted her. No, she didn’t know where they had found her. As in all blackouts, she really had not the slightest memory of where she had been prior to this very unpleasant current moment, sitting here, with an aching head, a terrible thirst, arguing with this stupid woman.

“I was at home. I was minding my business, when you took me here. You had no business taking me here. I was not bothering anyone. You took me away from my children! Who is going to care for them? They will be calling me. Yes, they need me.”

In fact, Dr. Semonova was uncertain of the children’s existence. They might, in fact, need this poor specimen of humanity. The thought depressed her. That a woman could abandon her children to drink in such low places, with such vile companions. The hospital workers had collected Buna from the city jail in Baku. It was some sort of miracle, really, that the workers at the jail had cared enough to call the hospital because they were concerned about the gash in Buna’s head. In fact, the wound bled a lot, but it was not very deep. As far as the people in the jail could determine, her head was cut when she fell on the floor, fighting with another prostitute in the bar.

Fortunately, the two hospital orderlies that Dr. Semonova had summoned finally knocked once on the door and entered. One of them had the syringe loaded with diazepam.

“Now, I really need to get some work done. You will go back to your bed and rest until you feel better. Then we can talk about getting your children some care. But – at this moment, we simply cannot release you. You are a danger to yourself and to the public in your condition.”

Buna felt two firm hands grab her shoulders and lift her from her chair. Her anger had been spent, and she allowed herself to be guided back to a rickety metal bed with rubber sheets. The hands grasped her arms, holding her tightly as a needle pierced her skin, shooting her with another tranquilizing dose. It hurt, but not much. Her head hurt.

“Water?” she asked.

Someone handed her a thick plastic cup, and then took it from her when she had drunk. She put her bandaged head back on the pillow case that was stained from blood that had seeped from her wound. She began to breathe more deeply, and soon fell into a dreamless sleep.

Let's not be offensive!

As we learn from a recent RFE article, the journalists from Yeni Musavat are the latest members of the press to come under pressure in Azerbaijan. While the journalists aren't under fire from the government, the source of their problems is damn close. The president's brother - Jalal Aliyev - said he was offended by an article an article that claimed some unfinished buildings in the capital belong to him. The article also maintained that no one complains about their incomplete status because they're owned by the president's brother.

Makes sense to me - but Jalal is offended by this assertion.

I'm reminded of a few things.

1. The many construction sites all over Baku - sites that grew like mushrooms, in defiance of any understanding of the law of supply and demand. Who was going to live in these luxury apartments? Everyone just assumed that construction was some not so secret way of money laundering.

2. The conversation I had with a newspaper editor in the country, not long after I moved there. In our conversations, at a certain point he referred to another newspaper being owned by the family. I asked "what family?" "The family," he informed me, was the term referring to the president's family. It's not like the president himself owned all that much - but rather the holdings were like some sort of large & extended business.

So - his brother is in the family & he owns a bunch of buildings.

Surprised? I'm not.

Don't forget imprisoned bloggers!

There is a tendency for the attention given to travesties of justice to peak at the time of a trial, and then to decline after a court has apparently decided to level an unjust verdict. Naturally, when a trial is ongoing, the hope is that the world community can somehow influence the people pulling strings to show mercy and commonsense. This did not happen, of course, in the case of Adnan and Emin, convicted last year on trumped up charges. But just because the two bloggers and activists are sitting in a jail in Azerbaijan is no reason to forget about them. To the contrary. So, I was heartened to read here about demonstrations planned at Azerbaijani embassies in London and Paris next week. Great! The Azerbaijan government must know that they cannot quash dissent with impunity. There are consequences. The government sits comfortably on oil revenues but they should know that they will never have the respect of the world community as long as they repress their own people!

Victory on the chessboard

Militarily, the stalemate between Azerbaijan may Armenia continues, but Azerbaijan was yesterday celebrating a victory over Armenia in the World Chess Championships.

Congratulations to Vugar Heshimov (2759), Teymur Recebov (2733), Shehriyar Memmedov (2741), Rauf Memmedov (2640), Qedir Huseynov (2614) and Nicat Memmedov (2610), members of the Azerbaijani chess team.

The games are being played in Bursa, Turkey.

What does unrest in Iran mean for Azerbaijan?

I read this article today, and thought about the implications of the unrest in Iran. Consequences are unpredictable. Will government opponents in Azerbaijan see the tyrants fall in Iran, and think about their own tyrants at home. What about the economic consequences - as a huge oil producer faces domestic unrest? What about the repercussions in countries that are dominated by Muslim fundamentalists? Potentially, the fall of the regime in Iran could affect any number of political and economic equilibria.

What do you think?

After a long hiatus, I've decided to start polling the public again. If you've been reading these pages at all regularly, then you are familiar with the case of Adnan and Emin.

Here is a poll about their situation, and about the political climate in Azerbaijan generally.

Shame on the government of Azerbaijan!

The sentence of Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade should not be a surprise. Two years for Adnan; two and a half for Emin. Everyone knows that the the government of Azerbaijan is not afraid to jail journalists. In the last 10 years, the government has jailed numerous courageous journalists and even has been implicated in their deaths. What that government does fear is its own people. The government of Azerbaijan fears its own people because it abuses them. This is the reason for the harsh sentence for two young men who were guilty of promoting democracy in a country where this concept endangers those in power.

I am not optimistic that there will be some reprieve for Emin and Adnan, although such events occur. This allows the president to act magnanimously after the kangaroo courts have done their work, intimidating journalists.

And I am not optimistic that pressure or reaction to the sentence from Europe or the United States will be able to sway the government of Azerbaijan toward leniency in general. With this decision, the government put its repressive stance on the record. For the rulers of Azerbaijan, control of Azerbaijani citizens is much more important than any sense of justice. To any casual observer, the case against these two young men is clearly evident as a farce. It was a show trial, but the government of Azerbaijan is not ashamed to conduct such travesties. Such procedures have nothing to do with justice, truth or fairness. They are about naked power and intimidation of the populace.

I write these lines before dawn in the United States. At this hour, the weather here is dark and rainy. Though the day is later in Baku, it is much, much darker there.

The screws tighten even on the faithful

Radio Liberty has a small piece today about what seems to be a minor request by the authorities in Baku: Turn down the call to prayer!

Many of those who have lived in Azerbaijan and other Muslim countries know this sound - in the morning and the evening most notably. I remember being awoken by the electronic muezzin in Lenkoran at what seemed to be an ungodly hour. I was staying near the Iranian-supported mosque, which may have explained its volume.

In Baku, I rarely noticed the muezzin, although I lived right next to the Old City.

I find it very hard to believe that the authorities are responding to any complaints for residents. The idea that authorities would respond to citizen complaints in general is just laughable. They are asking for the mosques to turn down the muezzins in a direct expression of power. They are asserting their dominance over the religious establishment. Religion should serve the state. Those who are involved with religious matters should not forget this fact.

Poland's shame

I saw this piece by Radio Free Europe yesterday. A shameful piece of pandering by the Polish government. I wonder what other quid pro quo was involved. I used to think that such symbolic honors were empty, but now I think they do have some significance. Every element that lets a repressive government claim legitimacy is important. A repressive government should be faced constantly with reproach for its repression. It is only through such consistent pressure that incremental change is possible.

Eynulla Fatullayev is not freed by international honor

Award winner Eynulla Fatullayev still serving his 8-year term

Imprisoned Azerbaijani journalist receives prestigious award

Eynulla Fatullayev, the editor of Realny Azerbaijan, is one of three journalists being awarded with a 2009 Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Also receiving awards are journalists from Sri Lanka and Tunisia.

Of course, Eynulla's joy at receiving the award may be mitigated by the fact that he is sitting in jail. This is not that unusual. Being a good and courageous journalist is quite dangerous in Azerbaijan. The main threat comes from the government. Currently, two bloggers are on trial on outrageous charges. Eynulla's offenses also were purely fictional, a case constructed by the government to put him behind bars.

The real offense was that in trying to find out who killed his colleague and friend, he uncovered facts that were uncomfortable for certain powerful people. Imprisonment was his reward for seeking justice.

Here is a synopsis of his story.