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WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE NEW BAKU
By Jenny Norton
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14374026
As I turn the corner into Shamsi Baidabeili Street in central Baku
I suddenly feel completely disorientated.
One side of this pleasant low-rise, 19th-Century street has been
demolished. Many of the houses on the remaining side are no more than
empty shells waiting to be knocked down.
It is all part of a plan to redevelop the area.
On the day I visit, a local human rights organisation that is based
on the street is organising a protest.
A young man shins up a drainpipe and starts spray-painting slogans
on the wall of the house defending its owners' right - under Azeri
and European law - to occupy the building.
It is not the first time he has done this. And each time someone has
come round after office hours and quietly painted over the slogans
with grey paint.
Eviction process
Local residents gather to support the protest. Everyone has a story
to tell. They are all angry and stunned - not just to be losing their
homes. But also at the way in which they say the authorities have
managed the whole compulsory purchase and eviction process.
"We were given two weeks to pack our things and leave," one woman
tells us. "When we said 'no' the police came to the house at night.
They shouted at us.
"They called my daughters prostitutes. I've worked honestly for this
country all my life. What have we done to deserve this?"
Former residents have tried to salvage scrap metal from the ruins on
Shamsi Baidabeili Street
People show us mobile phone recordings of police heavies smashing
down doors, and of excavators moving in as shocked residents stand
by and watch.
They take us further up the road to see a building that was knocked
down earlier that day. The gas pipe that was fixed onto the side of
the house is now propped up with a bit of wood. It hasn't been sealed
off and there's a smell of gas in the air.
Two doors down is a derelict building. Shockingly there are still two
families living in the rubble filled rooms. One is a mother with three
little girls. The other is a refugee from Azerbaijan's devastating
war with Armenia during the 1990s.
"Where will you go?" I ask her. "I don't know, she says flatly. Where
would you go if you were me?"
This is the dark side of a massive, oil-fuelled urban development
programme which is rapidly turning the Azeri capital into a Caspian
Sea version of Dubai.
And it is all the more sad because this is a programme which does
have many positives.
City of light
When I first came to Baku in 1995 the city was still in shock from
more than half a decade of war and civil unrest.
There were frequent power cuts. The once-lovely 19th Century buildings
on the sea front were dark and crumbling.
Now it is a city full of light and life. Mansions built by oil barons
from the past have been restored to their former glory.
Grim Soviet-era public buildings and tower blocks have been transformed
with a new facade of trademark honeyed sandstone.
The sea-front boulevard has been repaved and landscaped and is full of
flowers and lawns. There is even a shiny new shopping centre complete
with glass lifts, a food hall and a multiplex cinema.
Yes, some of the new mirror-glass sky scrapers are completely over
the top and look out of place in what was always a cosy kind of city.
And the breathtakingly conspicuous wealth being flaunted by the
privileged few who can afford to frequent the downtown designer
boutiques is quite shocking to see.
But for the ordinary families enjoying a stroll in the sunshine, or
going shopping in the new Debenhams department store, Baku's makeover
has made life much nicer in many ways.
But the people on Shamsi Baidabeyli Street do not feel part of any
of this. The heart is being ripped out of their neighbourhood and
they are not being offered much in return.
A once-cosy city is being rapidly transformed by oil money
And there is little prospect of taking on the system and winning.
Leyla Yunus, the head of the human rights organisation on Shamsi
Baidebeyli Street, says she has written eight letters to the interior
ministry outlining specific complaints about police behaviour over
the evictions. She has not received a reply to any of them.
Her attempts to pursue her case through the courts is also running
out of steam with a succession of judges refusing the take on the
case and referring it onto someone else.
She now has her sights set on the European Court of Human Rights.
City officials are quick to play down criticism of the demolitions.
"When you try to do something good there will always be some negative
reaction," Hadi Recebli, an MP from the ruling YAP party who heads
the Azerbaijani parliamentary committee on social policy issues,
told the BBC.
He said all demolitions in Baku were being carried out with the
sanction of the court. And he dismissed resident's complaints that
they weren't being offered a fair rate of compensation for their homes.
"Some people give in to their emotions when they tell you things like
this" he said. "I think some of the cases you are mentioning didn't
really happen and couldn't happen."
The Baku mayor's office did not offer to speak to the BBC.
Back on Shamsi Bediebeyli Street the protests and the evictions are
continuing and the overwhelming emotion of local residents seems to
be anger.
They feel humiliated to be treated as an inconvenience by city
officials who seem prepared to bulldoze both the homes and rights of
its poorest people in the pursuit of their dream for a new city.
And that new city seems all the poorer for being built on the ruins
of the lives of some of its most vulnerable inhabitants.
Additional reporting by Konul Khalilova
From: Baghdasarian
By Jenny Norton
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14374026
As I turn the corner into Shamsi Baidabeili Street in central Baku
I suddenly feel completely disorientated.
One side of this pleasant low-rise, 19th-Century street has been
demolished. Many of the houses on the remaining side are no more than
empty shells waiting to be knocked down.
It is all part of a plan to redevelop the area.
On the day I visit, a local human rights organisation that is based
on the street is organising a protest.
A young man shins up a drainpipe and starts spray-painting slogans
on the wall of the house defending its owners' right - under Azeri
and European law - to occupy the building.
It is not the first time he has done this. And each time someone has
come round after office hours and quietly painted over the slogans
with grey paint.
Eviction process
Local residents gather to support the protest. Everyone has a story
to tell. They are all angry and stunned - not just to be losing their
homes. But also at the way in which they say the authorities have
managed the whole compulsory purchase and eviction process.
"We were given two weeks to pack our things and leave," one woman
tells us. "When we said 'no' the police came to the house at night.
They shouted at us.
"They called my daughters prostitutes. I've worked honestly for this
country all my life. What have we done to deserve this?"
Former residents have tried to salvage scrap metal from the ruins on
Shamsi Baidabeili Street
People show us mobile phone recordings of police heavies smashing
down doors, and of excavators moving in as shocked residents stand
by and watch.
They take us further up the road to see a building that was knocked
down earlier that day. The gas pipe that was fixed onto the side of
the house is now propped up with a bit of wood. It hasn't been sealed
off and there's a smell of gas in the air.
Two doors down is a derelict building. Shockingly there are still two
families living in the rubble filled rooms. One is a mother with three
little girls. The other is a refugee from Azerbaijan's devastating
war with Armenia during the 1990s.
"Where will you go?" I ask her. "I don't know, she says flatly. Where
would you go if you were me?"
This is the dark side of a massive, oil-fuelled urban development
programme which is rapidly turning the Azeri capital into a Caspian
Sea version of Dubai.
And it is all the more sad because this is a programme which does
have many positives.
City of light
When I first came to Baku in 1995 the city was still in shock from
more than half a decade of war and civil unrest.
There were frequent power cuts. The once-lovely 19th Century buildings
on the sea front were dark and crumbling.
Now it is a city full of light and life. Mansions built by oil barons
from the past have been restored to their former glory.
Grim Soviet-era public buildings and tower blocks have been transformed
with a new facade of trademark honeyed sandstone.
The sea-front boulevard has been repaved and landscaped and is full of
flowers and lawns. There is even a shiny new shopping centre complete
with glass lifts, a food hall and a multiplex cinema.
Yes, some of the new mirror-glass sky scrapers are completely over
the top and look out of place in what was always a cosy kind of city.
And the breathtakingly conspicuous wealth being flaunted by the
privileged few who can afford to frequent the downtown designer
boutiques is quite shocking to see.
But for the ordinary families enjoying a stroll in the sunshine, or
going shopping in the new Debenhams department store, Baku's makeover
has made life much nicer in many ways.
But the people on Shamsi Baidabeyli Street do not feel part of any
of this. The heart is being ripped out of their neighbourhood and
they are not being offered much in return.
A once-cosy city is being rapidly transformed by oil money
And there is little prospect of taking on the system and winning.
Leyla Yunus, the head of the human rights organisation on Shamsi
Baidebeyli Street, says she has written eight letters to the interior
ministry outlining specific complaints about police behaviour over
the evictions. She has not received a reply to any of them.
Her attempts to pursue her case through the courts is also running
out of steam with a succession of judges refusing the take on the
case and referring it onto someone else.
She now has her sights set on the European Court of Human Rights.
City officials are quick to play down criticism of the demolitions.
"When you try to do something good there will always be some negative
reaction," Hadi Recebli, an MP from the ruling YAP party who heads
the Azerbaijani parliamentary committee on social policy issues,
told the BBC.
He said all demolitions in Baku were being carried out with the
sanction of the court. And he dismissed resident's complaints that
they weren't being offered a fair rate of compensation for their homes.
"Some people give in to their emotions when they tell you things like
this" he said. "I think some of the cases you are mentioning didn't
really happen and couldn't happen."
The Baku mayor's office did not offer to speak to the BBC.
Back on Shamsi Bediebeyli Street the protests and the evictions are
continuing and the overwhelming emotion of local residents seems to
be anger.
They feel humiliated to be treated as an inconvenience by city
officials who seem prepared to bulldoze both the homes and rights of
its poorest people in the pursuit of their dream for a new city.
And that new city seems all the poorer for being built on the ruins
of the lives of some of its most vulnerable inhabitants.
Additional reporting by Konul Khalilova
From: Baghdasarian