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  • Brutal Police Crackdowns In Azerbaijan, Courtesy Of Western-Made Wea

    BRUTAL POLICE CRACKDOWNS IN AZERBAIJAN, COURTESY OF WESTERN-MADE WEAPONS

    Radio Free Europe
    March 13, 2013

    by Arifa Kazimova and Daisy Sindelar
    March 13, 2013

    Hours before Azerbaijani activists gathered in Baku last weekend
    for an unsanctioned protest against military violence, blogger Habib
    Muntezir sent out a word of warning: "Sonic weapons with a horrible
    acoustic effect may be used to disperse the protests. Use cotton or
    earplugs to protect your ears."

    In the end, riot police did not resort to using the LRAD, or Long-Range
    Acoustic Device, which can blast a pain-inducing 150-decibel beam of
    sound to deter unruly crowds.

    But the presence of the LRAD, a U.S.-manufactured device that is
    gaining international popularity as a crowd-control tool, still
    provoked a wave of outrage among the March 10 protesters, who say
    the West should not be helping to stock the Baku regime's arsenal.

    "Hopefully, this is not a part of U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan," one
    activist wrote on Facebook in the wake of the protests, which ended
    with police using tear gas and water cannons -- both manufactured in
    Israel -- to forcibly break up the crowd.

    Such clashes are expected to grow as antigovernment sentiment mounts
    ahead of October elections in which the country's autocratic leader,
    Ilham Aliyev, is expected to run for a controversial third term
    as president.

    Aliyev has been widely criticized in the West for overseeing a deeply
    corrupt, oil-fed regime that has systematically muzzled and jailed
    critics to cement its hold on power.

    'Looking The Other Way'

    The U.S. State Department, in its annual human-rights report, has
    described Aliyev as "dominating" the executive, legislative, and
    judicial branches of government, which are largely seen as serving
    the will of Azerbaijan's ruling clans.

    Many, however, say such critiques ring hollow when the United States,
    in practical terms, has done little to stop the persistent repression
    of protesters, journalists, and human rights workers in Azerbaijan.

    (Ali Hasanov, the head of the presidential administration,
    unapologetically stated this week that "illegal, unsanctioned protests
    will be dispersed in the future.")

    Pointing to the rough treatment of the March 10 protesters and the
    unexplained disappearance of one of its organizers, Ilkin Rustamadze,
    Amnesty International says it is "outrageous" that the United States
    and the European Union "continue to look the other way" on Azerbaijani
    rights abuses.

    Natalia Nozadze, an Amnesty researcher, believes it's time for the
    international community to reconsider how it interacts with the
    Azerbaijani government.

    "The policy of the European Union, the U.S., and other global players
    toward Azerbaijan is mainly shaped by two considerations," she says.

    "Economic interests that are based on the rich resources of Azerbaijan,
    and another, very important, factor -- which is often downplayed --
    which is that Azerbaijan's current government, for better or for worse,
    is providing stability in the region."

    Much of the concern centers on the supply of arms to Azerbaijan. The
    country has used its energy revenues to fuel a massive military buildup
    amid a bellicose standoff with neighboring Armenia over the disputed
    territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

    At the same time, it has steadily built up an arsenal of crowd-control
    devices that it is using regularly against demonstrators engaging
    in antigovernment protests, including truncheons, rubber bullets,
    tear gas, and water cannons.

    Much of the equipment appears to have been purchased from Israel and
    the United States.

    Photographs of tear-gas canisters used to disperse crowds during
    January's Ismayili protests bear code numbers linking them to ISPRA,
    a defense manufacturing firm based in the Israeli city of Herzelya.

    Likewise, weapons experts contacted by RFE/RL said the Mercedes-mounted
    water cannon used in the March 10 protests matches the shape and
    design of cannons produced by the Beit Alfa Trailer Company, a known
    supplier to Azerbaijan.

    The LRAD, which resembles a truck-mounted satellite dish, has been
    brought to Azerbaijani protest sites but has not yet been used. (The
    LRAD has been used by police in neighboring Georgia since 2007, and
    was also purchased by Warsaw police ahead of Poland's co-hosting of
    the Euro 2012 soccer championships.)

    The acoustic device, which was developed by a California-based private
    manufacturer, has since been copied by China. But photographs of the
    LRAD at the March 10 protest suggest the device is of U.S. origin.

    Zardust Alizadeh, a Baku-based political analyst, maintains that until
    the West says otherwise, the flow of arms will continue unabated into
    Azerbaijan -- the only country in Eastern Europe whose arms imports
    are on the rise.

    Alizadeh believes human rights should be monitored by the West. "But
    they're not," he says. "Azerbaijan does what the United States and
    Europe want. So the issue is never discussed."

    The United States has several methods of withholding weapons sales to
    questionable regimes abroad, both through standard control lists and
    the so-called Leahy vetting process, which allows the State Department
    to use human rights criteria to withhold U.S. assistance and weigh
    in on defense transactions.

    But the U.S.-manufactured LRAD, which is just over a decade old and
    brands itself as a "communications device," appears on no U.S. control
    lists, and therefore requires no export licenses.

    According to Robert Putnam, the head of media and investor relations
    for the LRAD Corporation, the company has sold its equipment to
    60 countries.

    "Everybody that we've sold to is either part of a national
    [government] -- again, with the military, or law enforcement, or
    wildlife applications," he says. "Other than North Korea and a few
    countries like that that are on the banned list of really doing
    anything with, we basically look at our opportunities to sell our
    technology into other countries around the world."

    Business Trumps Rights Concerns?

    The press service of the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan notes that the
    U.S. State Department takes into account "political" and "human rights"
    conditions in making a decision on the provision of military equipment
    to countries abroad.

    But it adds that the LRAD is not defined as a "defense article," and
    notes that the embassy "does not typically get involved in contract
    negotiations between companies and foreign countries."

    Weapons watchdog groups say business and political concerns frequently
    trump human-rights considerations, even in countries like the United
    States that serve as vocal standard-bearers on global rights issues.

    The United States suspended its supplies of tear gas to Egypt
    during the Arab Spring uprising to protest the violent crackdown
    on protesters. But it has since resumed shipments, even though the
    country's new Islamist-led government has also used tear gas to subdue
    peaceful protesters.

    The U.K.-based Omega Research Foundation, which tracks the manufacture
    and trade of military and police equipment, says that while rules
    exist, they are rarely applied evenly.

    "There are clearly some countries that have a persistent pattern
    of rights violations which continue to receive military, security,
    or police support," the foundation says in an upcoming report on U.S.

    exports of crowd control and other weapons.

    It adds, "The U.S. has very good State Department annual human rights
    reports, but those aren't applied rigorously, because if they were,
    then many of the export licenses would not be granted."

    Amnesty's Nozadze echoes the sentiment, saying, "Certainly countries
    have, if not a legal, then certainly a moral responsibility to ensure
    the weapons produced in their country are not used for purposes of
    abusing human rights."

    Certainly, crowd-control devices like tear gas, rubber bullets,
    and the LRAD -- which are generally categorized as "nonlethal" or
    "less lethal" weapons -- are seen as preferable options to guns and
    live ammunition, particularly in countries where police have the
    reputation of acting aggressively against protesters.

    All the same, such devices are not without risk. Numerous deaths have
    been recorded in association with rubber bullets, tear gas, and other
    chemical sprays, which can sometimes inhibit breathing for up to half
    an hour.

    The Omega Research Foundation says the use of crowd-control weapons
    can be "legitimate" in certain instances, but that the devices are
    often misused due to inadequate training or poor policing decisions.

    Dozens of protesters at the March 10 rally bore the signs of rough
    treatment, and one photojournalist received an eye injury after being
    knocked to the ground by a water cannon that was fired without warning.

    The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has
    worked with Azerbaijani police forces on training crowd-control
    tactics, resulting in what the U.S. characterized as a "more
    appropriate, proportional, and measured" response during a handful
    of demonstrations in 2011.

    It is unclear, however, whether such lessons will last, particularly in
    what is expected to be a volatile run-up to the presidential election
    in October.

    The outcry over the March 10 crackdown has prompted some within
    Azerbaijan to defend the police. "This nation doesn't think," one
    person commented on Facebook. "You run to the police when something
    happens to you, but now you're cursing them. The police are protecting
    the public order. That was an unsanctioned protest, and the police
    were following the law."

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