European Forum

Azerbaijani Facebook activist jailed for two years

A young opposition activist in Azerbaijan who used the social-networking site Facebook to call for antigovernment protests, has been jailed for two years. Police in the authoritarian ex-Soviet nation have cracked down on all attempts to hold even the smallest demonstration.

A court in Azerbaijan has sentenced the 29-year old political activist Baxtiyar Haciyev to two years in jail for declining to perform his military service. Haciyev, a Harvard graduate and former parliament candidate, is one of a group of activists behind a Facebook-led call for public protests in Azerbaijan inspired by the mass movement that toppled the governments in Tunisia and Egypt. Haciyev denied the charges on declining to perform military service and attributed his arrest to his Facebook activity trying to organize antigovernment protests. Also fellow activists say that the trial was politically motivated.

During the trial, which was monitored by Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe observers, Haciyev said that the reason he returned to Azerbaijan from the United States last year was because he thought “we had a chance to make some reforms.” The U.S. Embassy in Baku said in a statement that the timing of Haciyev’s arrest following his efforts to organize antigovernment protests “raised questions about the authorities’ use of the judicial system to punish dissent.”

Haciyev and his supporters launched the March 11 “Great People’s Day” online event in which they asked people to click their approval of the protest, as well as to gather in different towns and cities across Azerbaijan. On 4 March Haciyev was arrested with four other young activists and held in pretrial detention for a month. On 12 May the European Parliament condemned the crackdown on opposition protests in Azerbaijan and expressed “deep concern” at the increased number of attacks on civil society, social-network activists and journalists in the country. The ruling New Azerbaijan Party (NAP) has strongly rejected the European Parliament’s remarks, saying they aim to distort the real situation in Azerbaijan and expressed hope that the EP will make efforts to cover the truth based on an objective approach.

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek is scheduled to begin a visit to Azerbaijan on May 20.

Sources: RFE/RL; RFI; TodayAZ        Photo: Flicker by Maroccanmary