Tweet
THOMAS DE WAAL: ACCUSATION OF AZERBAIJANI HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS FOR COOPERATION WITH ARMENIANS IS THE ONLY WAY TO DISCREDIT THE
14:45 12/01/2015 >> SOCIETY
Over the past year and a half, the government of Azerbaijan has taken
an increasingly nasty, authoritarian, and anti-Western character,
writes Thomas de Waal, the senior associate for the Caucasus at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the article titled "A
free-thinker loses his freedom in Azerbaijan" which is dedicated to
the Azerbaijani scientist Arif Yunus. The latter celebrates his 60th
birthday in prison. The article is published on the Open Democracy
site.
"Along with Arif and Leyla Yunus, several other well-respected
scholars, journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists, have been
put in jail on spurious charges. In the vocabulary of the Soviet Union,
all of these people can be characterised as dissidents," Thomas de
Waal writes and recalls that on August last year after the house
arrest Arif Yunus was kept in an isolation cell in the prison of the
National Security Agency, the successor to the KGB. He is unable to
receive visits or letters.
He is also one of the few Azerbaijanis who actually went to Armenia.
Like many other natives of Baku, Yunus had an Armenian mother, but
unlike most he chose not to hide it.
"The charge of collaboration with the Armenians levelled against
Arif and Leyla Yunus is probably just a pretext, a way of blackening
their names in the eyes of the public. The Armenian card is also being
played against Rauf Mirkadirov, a well-known journalist and columnist,
who was arrested last April on similar charges after making one visit
to Armenia. The main reason for their arrests is probably Leyla Yunus'
human rights work," notes de Waal.
In his article he presents Arif Yunus' scientific and journalistic
activities, as well as turns to the unpublished collection of
first-person stories and anecdotes. He tells, for example, the tale
of the traffic policeman outside the town of Shemakhi who retired
but still parked his car in his customary spot by the roadside and
took bribes from passing motorists -- who moreover gave them quite
willingly. The collection also presents a story of how President Heidar
Aliyev was given a library card to the new US library in Baku by then
American ambassador Richard Kauzlarich. Arif understood both sides
of the story: Kauzlarich who believed he was making a nice gesture,
Aliyev who was offended that he was being treated as though he was
any other citizen of Azerbaijan.
According to de Waal this irreverent and affectionate vision of
the real Caucasus does not fit with the scrubbed marble-clad Dubai
lookalike that the Azerbaijani authorities are trying to make of
their country, with international events like the Eurovision Song
Context or European Olympics.
"Azerbaijan's leaders evidently believe that this virtual reality must
be defended from all questioning and scrutiny. That is the main reason
that they have now shut down the major source of independent news,
the US-funded radio station, Radio Liberty," notes Thomas de Waal.
http://www.panorama.am/en/politics/2015/01/12/thomas-de-waal/
14:45 12/01/2015 >> SOCIETY
Over the past year and a half, the government of Azerbaijan has taken
an increasingly nasty, authoritarian, and anti-Western character,
writes Thomas de Waal, the senior associate for the Caucasus at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the article titled "A
free-thinker loses his freedom in Azerbaijan" which is dedicated to
the Azerbaijani scientist Arif Yunus. The latter celebrates his 60th
birthday in prison. The article is published on the Open Democracy
site.
"Along with Arif and Leyla Yunus, several other well-respected
scholars, journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists, have been
put in jail on spurious charges. In the vocabulary of the Soviet Union,
all of these people can be characterised as dissidents," Thomas de
Waal writes and recalls that on August last year after the house
arrest Arif Yunus was kept in an isolation cell in the prison of the
National Security Agency, the successor to the KGB. He is unable to
receive visits or letters.
He is also one of the few Azerbaijanis who actually went to Armenia.
Like many other natives of Baku, Yunus had an Armenian mother, but
unlike most he chose not to hide it.
"The charge of collaboration with the Armenians levelled against
Arif and Leyla Yunus is probably just a pretext, a way of blackening
their names in the eyes of the public. The Armenian card is also being
played against Rauf Mirkadirov, a well-known journalist and columnist,
who was arrested last April on similar charges after making one visit
to Armenia. The main reason for their arrests is probably Leyla Yunus'
human rights work," notes de Waal.
In his article he presents Arif Yunus' scientific and journalistic
activities, as well as turns to the unpublished collection of
first-person stories and anecdotes. He tells, for example, the tale
of the traffic policeman outside the town of Shemakhi who retired
but still parked his car in his customary spot by the roadside and
took bribes from passing motorists -- who moreover gave them quite
willingly. The collection also presents a story of how President Heidar
Aliyev was given a library card to the new US library in Baku by then
American ambassador Richard Kauzlarich. Arif understood both sides
of the story: Kauzlarich who believed he was making a nice gesture,
Aliyev who was offended that he was being treated as though he was
any other citizen of Azerbaijan.
According to de Waal this irreverent and affectionate vision of
the real Caucasus does not fit with the scrubbed marble-clad Dubai
lookalike that the Azerbaijani authorities are trying to make of
their country, with international events like the Eurovision Song
Context or European Olympics.
"Azerbaijan's leaders evidently believe that this virtual reality must
be defended from all questioning and scrutiny. That is the main reason
that they have now shut down the major source of independent news,
the US-funded radio station, Radio Liberty," notes Thomas de Waal.
http://www.panorama.am/en/politics/2015/01/12/thomas-de-waal/