Topical Issues

On the occasion of the intimidation, deprivation of awards and other forms of pressure on the Azerbaijani writer A. Ailisi and his "Stone Dreams"

09.02.2013

Statement of the Institute for Peace and Democracy

Harassment and persecutions raised by the authorities of Azerbaijan against 75-year-old prominent writer of Azerbaijan Akram Aylisli dishonor our country and the nation!

In December 2012 Druzhba Narodov journal (Moscow) published Stony Dreams, a novel written by A. Aylisli. In his novel A. Aylisli sheds a true light on the totalitarian regime of Heydar Aliyev, the tragedy of the ethnic discord between Azerbaijanis and Armenians, to say that the both nations must and can live together!

Ramil Safarov brought shame when he murdered the unarmed sleeping man, but Akram Aylisli honors his nation when he condemns murder in his novel.

The Aliyev’s regime responded to the civic position of the writer in a Stalinist way: the writer was stripped of his title ‘national writer’, pensions, awards, banished from the Writers’ Union, his son and wife lost jobs, the pro-governmental media mounted a shameful campaign of harassment and insult. His name was accursed. The authorities are bringing the youth to the writer’s house to burn his photos and scream out insulting words.

IPD plans the following actions to counter the harassment campaign against the WRITER who stood for ideals of humanism

employ resources of the first joint Azerbaijani-Armenian website to promote the oeuvre of Akram Aylisli
arrange online press-conferences of Akram Aylisli with participation of international media
hold a conference to commemorate brave sons of Azerbaijan
prepare a special video presentation about the harassment of the writer and his fearlessness

IPD calls on all citizens of the country to stand against ferocity and ignorance of the powers that be and remember Voltaire who said back in the 18th century, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’.

Leyla Yunus, Doctor of Historical Sciences

Director, Institute for Peace and Democracy, Baku, AzerbaijanТравля и гонения, развязанные властями Азербайджана в отношении 75-летнего известного писателя Азербайджана Акрама Айлисли позорят нашу страну и наш народ!

12.02.2013

Azerbaijan turns on one of its own with bounty on pro-Armenian author

By Will Englund
The Washington Times

MOSCOW — Azerbaijan’s troubled efforts to portray itself as a progressive and Western-oriented country took a beating this week with the announcement by a pro-government political party that it will pay $12,700 to anyone who cuts off the ear of a 75-year-old novelist.

The author is Akram Aylisli, and his crime is to have written a novella called “Stone Dreams” that is sympathetic to Armenians and recounts Azeri atrocities in the war between the two countries 20 years ago. Aylisli’s misfortune is to have had his work published, in Russia, at a time when an insecure regime in Azerbaijan is whipping up anti-Armenian fervor.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has already stripped Aylisli of his title of “People’s Writer” and the pension that goes with it. Aylisli’s son was fired from his job and parliament has demanded that Aylisli submit to a DNA test to prove he’s Azerbaijani. Over the weekend, book burnings were staged around the country.

But on Monday the head of the Modern Musavat party, Hafiz Hajiyev, told the Turan Information Agency that the time has come for Aylisli to be punished forportraying Azerbaijanis as savages.

“We have to cut off his ear,” Hajiyev said. “This decision is to be executed by members of the youth branch of the party.”

Watchdog groups, including Human Rights Watch and the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety, denounced the threat. “I can’t believe he’s a man or human being,” Leyla Yunus, head of the Baku-based Institute of Peace and Democracy, said of Hajiyev. Even the Soviet era, Yunus said, didn’t feature “such horrible propaganda.”

The Interior Ministry pointed out that cutting off an ear is a crime and said it would investigate. But the government, rattled by protests in January, has been lashing out at its opponents and, as it has in the past, tried to distract public opinion by stirring up fears of an Armenian threat. Although a 1994 cease-fire stopped the war between the two former Soviet republics, Armenians still hold the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, and Aliyev frequentlyvows to take it back.

Antagonism is high, and Aylisli has fallen afoul of that. While Azerbaijan has spent billions of dollars in oil revenue on military equipment, efforts by the United States, Russia and France to broker a settlement have failed. Shots across the cease-fire line are becoming more common, and in the past week two Azeri soldiers and one Armenian have reportedly been killed.

E. Wayne Merry, a senior fellow for Europe and Eurasia at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, said recently that Nagorno-Karabakh is in a “pre-war” situation.

The government also has arrested two leading opposition politicians, Tofik Agublu and Ilgar Mammadov, and charged them with fomenting protests last month over an alleged brothel in the town of Ismayilli. The brothel, which was burned down, reportedly was owned by the son of one of Aliyev’s cabinet ministers.

The men will be held for two months and then face trial on charges that could bring three-year prison sentences. The arrests have been criticized by the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry has rejected the criticism as unfounded.

Mammadov is a member of the advisory board of a group called Revenue Watch, which called for the immediate release of the two men. The United States, which values Azerbaijan for its hostility to neighboring Iran but criticizes the country’s human rights practices, urged the government to observe due process.

In an e-mail Mammadov sent to his supporters on the eve of his Feb. 4 arrest, he noted that he had been to Ismayilli, in a lull between protests, to see for himself what was going on. “Now the government is trying to use that fact to speculate that I have organized that massive unrest,” he wrote. He noted that his Republican Alternative party is likely to nominate him to run for president against Aliyev in October.

Aylisli, who could not be reached Tuesday, told Radio Liberty two weeks ago that he dwelt on Azeri atrocities in “Stone Dreams” because that was his responsibility as an Azerbaijani writer. Let Armenian authors, he said, write about the atrocities of their side — notably, a 1992 massacre in the town of Khojaly, the memory of which has become a major rallying point for aggrieved Azeris.

Aylisli also has written thinly veiled attacks on both Aliyev and his father, Heydar Aliyev, the former president, for the brutality and corruption of their regimes. That’s an image that Azerbaijan has gone to great lengths to obscure, helped by the glitzy revival of its capital, Baku, thanks to revenue from gas and oil. Using events like last year’s Eurovision song contest in Baku, the government has painted Azerbaijan as an outpost of flash and modernity that outshines its neighbor, Iran.

The secular fatwa against Aylisli’s ear, though, could make that campaign an uphill battle.

Will Englund

12.02.2013

Human Rights Watch: Stop Harassing Writer

The Azerbaijani government should immediately end a hostile campaign of intimidation against writer Akram Aylisli, Human Rights Watch said today. Aylisli recently published a controversial novel depicting relationships between ethnic Azeris and Armenians in Azerbaijan.

Foreign governments and intergovernmental organizations of which Azerbaijan is a member should speak out against this intimidation campaign. They should urge the authorities to immediately investigate those responsible for threats against Aylisli, and to respect freedom of expression.

"The Azerbaijani authorities have an obligation to protect Akram Aylisli," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Instead, they have led the effort to intimidate him, putting him at risk with a campaign of vicious smears and hostile rhetoric."

Aylisli, a member of the Union of Writers of Azerbaijan since the Soviet era, is the author of Stone Dreams. The novel includes a description of violence by ethnic Azeris against Armenians during the 1920s, and at the end of the Soviet era, when the two countries engaged in armed conflict. Aylisli told Human Rights Watch that he saw the novel as an appeal for friendship between the two nations. The novel was published in Friendship of Peoples, a Russian literary journal, in December 2012.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a seven-year war over Nagorno-Karabakh, a primarily ethnic Armenian-populated autonomous enclave in Azerbaijan. Despite a 1994 ceasefire, the conflict has not yet reached a political solution. Against the background of the unresolved nature of the conflict, Aylisli's sympathetic portrayal of Armenians and condemnation of violence against them caused uproar in Azerbaijan. An escalating crescendo of hateful rhetoric and threats against Aylisli started at the end of January 2013, culminating in a February 11 public statement by Hafiz Hajiyev, head of Modern Musavat, a pro-government political party. Hajiyev publicly said that he would pay AZN10,000 [US$12,700] to anyone who would cut off Aylisli's ear.

"Azerbaijan's authorities should immediately investigate and hold accountable anyone responsible for making threats against Aylisli, and ensure his personal safety," Williamson said.

On January 29, officials from the Yeni Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan's ruling party, publicly called on Aylisli to withdraw the novel and ask for the nation's forgiveness. Aylisli told Human Rights Watch that two days later, a crowd of about 70 people gathered in front of his home, shouting "Akram, leave the country now," and "Shame on you", and burned effigies of the author. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that police were present but made no effort to disperse the crowd. No damage was done to Aylisli's home.

In a speech about Aylisli's book, a high level official from Azerbaijan's presidential administration said that, "We, as the Azerbaijani people, must express public hatred toward these people," a comment that appeared aimed at Aylisli.

During a February 1 session, some members of Azerbaijan's parliament denounced Aylisli, called for him to be stripped of his honorary "People's Writer" title and medals, and demanded that he take a DNA test to prove his ethnicity. On February 7, President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree stripping Aylisli of the title, which he had held since 1998, and cutting off his presidential monthly pension of AZN1000 [US$1,270], which he had drawn since 2002. Aylisli learned of the presidential decree from television news.

In the wake of the public vitriol, Aylisli's wife and son were fired from their jobs. On February 4, a senior officer at Azerbaijan's customs agency forced Najaf Naibov-Aylisli, Aylisli's son, to sign a statement that he was "voluntarily" resigning from his job as department chief. Aylisli told Human Rights Watch his son had received no reprimands during his 12 years on job.

"My son had nothing to do with politics," Aylisli said. "In fact he always advised me not to write about politics and never agreed with my political views."

On February 5, Aylisli's wife, Galina Alexandrovna, was forced to sign a "voluntary" statement resigning from her job at a public library, following an inspection announced several days before.

Public book burnings of Aylisli's works, some organized by the ruling party, have taken place in several cities in Azerbaijan.

"The government of Azerbaijan is making a mockery of its international obligations on freedom of expression," Williamson said. "This is shocking, particularly after Azerbaijani officials flocked to Strasbourg last month to tout the government's human rights record at the Council of Europe."

The European Court of Human Rights has issued numerous rulings upholding the principle that freedom of speech also protects ideas that might be shocking or disturbing to society. In a judgment handed down against Azerbaijan, in a case that dealt speech related to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, the court said, "[F]reedom of information applie[s] not only to information or ideas that are favorably received, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb."

19.02.2013

Azerbaijani novelist vilified for his call for reconciliation

By Sergei L. Loiko

Los Angeles Times

MOSCOW — His books were burned by a mob in Azerbaijan'ssecond-largest city. His wife and son have lost their jobs. A crowd in a small town demanded that his blood be tested to establish his true ethnicity. The nation's president stripped him of his honorary title as "the People's Writer." And an infuriated mob under his window made threats against his life and told him to leave the country.

Akram Aylisli, 75, says the treatment he has received since publication of the Russian translation of his latest book, "Stone Dreams," defies even his own literary imagination.

The book describes outbreaks of ethnic violence in Azerbaijan, then a Soviet republic, in the waning days of the Soviet Union. Subsequently, at least 30,000 ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis died in four years of fighting over the mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, where Armenian troops are still stationed.

"My book has nothing to do with politics," Aylisli said in a phone interview from his home in Baku, the capital. "It simply calls upon both Armenians and Azerbaijanis to repent for their past sins and try to turn over a new leaf in the history of their centuries-old relationship."

Instead, since the Russian translation of the book was carried in the December issue of the Friendship of Peoples journal — published in Moscow — Aylisli's life has been a living hell.

On Feb. 7, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev issued two decrees stripping the author of the honorary title of the People's Writer, awarded in 1998. He also deprived Aylisli of a monthly stipend of about $1,270.

"In this novel written in a style alien to the spirit of our people, the author tries to form an anti-humane image of the Azerbaijani people and unjustifiably to blame them for acts contradictory to universal human values, distorting the essence of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, painting black our distant and recent past," says one of the decrees.

A Russian literary editor said he doubted that Aliyev and protesting Azerbaijanis had even read the book.

"This book in a most humane way tries to study the nature of such an ugly phenomenon as inter-ethnic hatred and certainly possesses none of the qualities attributed to it in Aliyev's decree," said Leonid Bakhnov, head of the prose department at the Russian journal.

"The whole story with Aylisli reminds me of the harassment campaign against [Russian Nobel laureate Boris] Pasternak in the late 1950s, when thousands of people who had never even seen a single paragraph from 'Doctor Zhivago' published abroad were made to come out and publicly condemn it."

Aylisli said that his son Najaf, a senior customs officer, was pressured into quitting his job on Feb. 4. The next day, the writer's wife, Galina, was forced to leave her longtime position as a library director.

Dozens of residents of Aylisli's hometown, Aylis, the main setting for the book, were shown on television denouncing the author and demanding that his blood be tested. Within days, a mob in the main square of Ganja burned hundreds of volumes of Aylisli's books.

Then in Baku, the head of the pro-presidential Modern Musavat Party confirmed that he had offered the equivalent of $12,700 to anyone who cut off the author's ear. The party "decided that any punishment will be insufficient for Aylisli; that is why it is necessary to cut off his ear," the politician told the Turan news agency.

"I feel like a victim of Stalinist trials, and frankly I am afraid to venture out the door these days," Aylisli said. "They stand outside my window and scream at the top of their throats that I am a traitor and that I must die or leave the country."

Leila Yunus, director of the Institute of Peace and Democracy, a Baku-based think tank, said the anger had been whipped up by authorities to deflect attention from the country's problems.

"In the course of the recent months we have seen many mass rallies across the country protesting against corruption and lack of democracy and demanding President Aliyev's resignation," she said in a phone interview. "Aylisli was chosen by the authorities as a new enemy of the people to confuse protesters and make them vent some of their accumulated anger and frustration on the innocent author."

Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on the group's website that instead of protecting the author, the Azerbaijani government had "led the effort to intimidate him, putting him at risk with a campaign of vicious smears and hostile rhetoric."

In "Stone Dreams," Aylisli calls on his compatriots to have compassion for Armenians, given the hardship they have suffered over the centuries.

"If a single candle were lighted for every murdered Armenian, the light from these candles would be brighter than that of the moon," says a key character in the novel. "This nation was tired and exhausted from the violence but they never stopped building their churches, writing their books and raising arms to heaven appealing to their God."

"Apparently his call was heard but grossly misinterpreted," editor Bakhnov said. "But nevertheless, one day they will be obligated to erect a monument for him."

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