Aliyev did it! Azerbaijan takes over Council of Europe's Chairmanship

Indeed, he did it! Azerbaijan took over Council of Europe's chairmanship for the course of the next 6 months while most of its members remained silent! The taste of caviar is sweet isn't it?! 

According to Reporters Without Borders, Azerbaijan takes over the chairmanship with the worst press freedom record of other 47 member states. 

So much for bastions of democracy, free speech and human rights! 

The reality of politics is harsh and Azerbaijan is a perfect example. It plays the game just the way it wants because there are no honest judges left in the game. 

For the apologists of Azerbaijan's regime

Dear apologist, the video (below) is from the country you call a democracy, you call a partner, you speak of highly at meetings and events. This is from a country where 8 young innocent men were sentenced on trumped up charges for just believing in values of freedom, equality, for wanting Azerbaijan to be a true democracy and not a democracy served on a golden platter full of caviar, which you don't mind shoving in your face.

Dear international actors who have been looking the other way. You called our recent elections free and fair, you have raised no voice when honest people were put in jail. You remain silent to the daily struggles of citizens, because you get what you need in return- the resources to keep your people safe and warm. 

Dear government official, you have done your job well. You have silenced continuously those you want to be silenced. You intimidate those who are free. You instill fear in your people. You have chained your very own people and you have sucked up all the life out of them- you have created a country of robots and soulless individuals, brainwashed, afraid, not free. You have skillfully blackmailed, detained, murdered, jailed, and yet you are still considered a democracy abroad by any of your apologists (who you keep well fed, similar to brainwashing but the other way around). You have released those who belong in jail, and you have arrested those who believe in something bigger.

So, what does today leave us with... Crushed hopes, devastated families, mothers and fathers in despair, but not to worry we still have plenty of apologists of Azerbaijan who don't give a damn thing about the country's people and their chewed up rights. Oh and a country taking over the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. Way to go! Just sit there, silently, watching the country's free thinkers suffocate. 

N!DA

They are on their 9th day of hunger strike.

Spring clean up in Azerbaijan- just in time for Novruz

Just in time- as Azerbaijani people get closer to celebrating Novruz- a traditional holiday welcoming spring- Azerbaijani government gives them a very nice spring present as part of the spring clean up. Instead of cleaning up the mess of corruption and their own wrong doings, they are after something else. On March 17th, the Sheki District Court sentenced Ilgar Mammadov and Tofig Yagublu to 7 and 5.6 years respectively. The two were arrested in February of 2013 during their visit to Ismayili, a region in northern Azerbaijan where people embraced 2013 with taking the streets and voicing their frustration with the social injustice and power abuse.

Ilgar Mammadov is the Chairman of the Republican Alternative Political Movement. He was meant to run in October 2013 Presidential Elections but due to his arrest was unable to. 

Tofig Yagubli is a journalist with the local opposition paper Yeni Musavat and deputy chairman of the opposition Musavat Party. The two were arrested on charges of inciting violence. Unlike the court and the authorities, Yagublu and Mammadov claim their visit had no such intention. According to a statement by the Institute of Reporters' Freedom and Safety, Mammadov and Yagublu went to Ismayilli to get first hand information of what was going on. 

If it is still not clear, let me chime in, the authorities were looking for an excuse to get the two arrested, perhaps they even developed a plan, but failed at implementing the original plan, when a new opportunity came knocking on their door. Aha! they said, how convenient, lets just arrest them when the two get to Ismayilli- there will be plenty of things then we could use against them. 

So here you have it- two more people in jail for what?! Isn't it clear that the only body responsible for inciting violence is the government itself?! How long and how many more arrests, detentions, and deaths, it is going to take for the international organisations like the Council of Europe to recognize that Azerbaijani government is is nothing short of an authoritarian state and that measures must be taken against? I guess not for a while... At least not as long as we have the oil, the gas, and of course, the caviar...

The stability they show you

Perhaps, this is for the attention of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, perhaps this is for the attention of human rights watch organizations, perhaps its for nobody's attention after all nobody cares really at policy and decision making level abroad about rights, freedoms of Azerbaijani people. 

So perhaps I am addressing very those members of the parliament who voted against the resolution on political prisoners not so long ago. I must share with you, dear apologists and avid supporters, the brutality of Azerbaijani government, its so called democracy and respect for its people. Surely, this is not the kind of stability our officials talk about when they meet in Brussels, Strasbourg or DC. And surely, this is not what they show you when they invite you to lavish parties at consulates, embassies, residences of Azerbaijani ambassadors abroad. 

This is from a letter shared by journalists arrested during the riots in Ismayilli:

They keep people from Quba in terrible conditions. Those trialed in Khachmaz as "organizers" of Quba events were taken from Baku (Kurdakhani) to Khachmaz on a cargo train. They traveled the night, cold, on the bare floor of the compartment reaching their destination in the morning. In Khachmaz they are held in a room with an open sewage. They are sticking bottles into the hole of the sewage just so not to go crazy.

Sounds like a scene from a movie, but its not. This is real. This is present day Azerbaijan, and this is the country you dear apologists say is doing pretty well and there are no issues with human rights abuse. But do not worry, you are safe and you can have as much caviar as you want. Because this is the imaginary stable Azerbaijan you prefer to believe in.

Thought police and Oceanic Azerbaijan

Source: Google Images

Perhaps you have heard of this term. I camE across it while reading 1984 by G.Orwell. Interesting book by the way. A friend recently told me that 1984 applies more to countries like Azerbaijan, Belarus and Kazakhstan while Huxley's Brave New World to the West. The more I read, further I realize my friend is right and that I fully agree with him. 

The extent of surveillance state, paranoid assumptions, robotized thinking and much more- remind me of my own country and many other countries around the world where governments could not care less for its people while skillfully instilling fear in minds of millions.

So far however, my personal favorite in the book are references to what the author describes as Thought Police. People vanish because of their thoughts writes the author, especially when they are different i.e., potential challengers of the status quo must go (literally). There are monitors everywhere to "help" Thought Police, there are spies too. You are not safe even when you are with your family let alone your "comrades". The careful strategy implemented by the Big Brother ensures its power and permanency while eliminating any possible threats. 

Reminding me of how Azerbaijani police deals with protestors, advocates, journalists and activists on the streets and off the streets acting on the commands of their own version of Big Brother makes me think that soon we might too have the Though Police department. And the neglect of reality fits even better. Earlier in the book the author describes how easily facts are changed, including economy. 

The actual output was given at sixty- two millions. Winston, however in re-writing the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty- seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been over- fulfilled. In any case, sixty- two millions was no nearer to the truth than fifty- seven millions, or than a hundred and forty- five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had bee produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of booths were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot (pp. 43- 44).

Rings a bell? Think Azerbaijani State Statistical Institute, think inflation numbers, think unemployment numbers, think whatever indicator that comes to your mind then put it into present day Azerbaijani context and voila, Azerbaijan ain't that far from Oceania.

And then add this article (and you can even watch it too [AZ]) published today of bold statements made by the President of Oceania ehm, excuse me, of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev speak of prospering democracy in Azerbaijan while vicious Europeans slam their people for protesting on the streets. Never mind how his very own police is slamming its very own people and the recently adopted gigantic fines added on November 10th to the Law on Freedom of Assembly. Never mind any of that, so long as the bellies of the upper echelons are full, their minds empty and their pockets full.

I guess the show must go on...

From presidency for life, to life long immunity- whats next for Azerbaijan? Life long police state?

It started with a Referendum in 2009 when Azerbaijani President, secured pretty much a presidency for life. But as this wasn't enough, in order to protect himself and his family from recent wave of criticisms and investigations targeting some of the personal and related shady businesses Azerbaijani Parliament (full of pro government puppets) passed two laws. From now on, the President and his family will have extensive immunity rights states one of the laws. The second law "bars government officials from distributing information about companies if doing so 'contradicts the national interests of Azerbaijan in political, economic, and monetary policy, the defense of public order, the health and moral values of the people, or harms the commercial or other interests of individuals."

How is this "necessary" I am not sure, so I am wondering whether the lawyer, Alasgar Mammadli,  didn't have any more concrete explanations apart from stating that "country's political landscape makes such protections necessary"? I thought we were a transparent democracy?!

Anyway, it is obvious that these new changes in our legislation are surely only meant to further embed the authoritarian rule in Azerbaijan and to limit advocates in their attempts to uncover the corrupted nature of most of the Azerbaijani leadership. What will be next? Asking for a permission to speak (though this too ain't far from becoming a reality- as those who speak of what is happening in the country are either "drug addicts", "traitors" or "hooligans")? I guess we'll see soon... how our country turns into a police state.