Daily Mail: Azerbaijan – nation, which tortures its own people

PanARMENIAN.Net - On March 17, while playing at an opposition demonstration in his home country of Azerbaijan, rap artist Jamal Ali, 24, whose lyrics are often critical of his government was arrested with his bass guitarist, Natiq Kamilov. They were badly beaten by the police, sentenced to ten days in jail and tortured, says a report in Daily Mail.

“They tortured me twice,” Ali says. “In the court and police station they just hit me. The proper beating was in jail. They called it lessons. I had two courses. I remember the first one I watched the clock on the wall; it was two when I went in and when I got out it was five. Almost three hours. The second was about two hours,” it quotes Ali as saying.

This is a far cry from the sequins and dry ice of the Eurovision Song Contest. Yet Azerbaijan is hosting this year’s show, Daily Mail says.

The Aliyevs (the ruling clan) like to demonstrate their power, and armed police are a constant presence on the streets. For the average Azerbaijani, life isn’t too bad: there are jobs and money in this oil-rich state. The problems come if you disagree. The most active dissidents are intimidated with threats of prison and torture, and family members can be fired from their jobs if they are in government positions (and the government can lean on private firms). For the past seven years, the government has banned any opposition rallies. However, in the run up to Eurovision, two official demonstrations were allowed on the outskirts of Baku. Most Azerbaijanis assume that after the contest rallies will be banned again, it says.

Jamal Ali is not the only one to suffer. After being released from prison, his bass guitarist, Natiq Kamilov, has been press-ganged into the army. “It’s completely illegal. He’s a student. He’s exempt from military service,” says Ali. “But he was called down to the army office and taken away.”

He is afraid for Kamilov’s life. “We have a lot of unexplained casualties in our army every year.”

Ali thinks Eurovision is the only reason he’s still free.

Azer Mammadov, another singer, fled to Holland with his wife and baby daughter last year because of government harassment. His songs, such as Mr Necessary, criticize the regime. His problems came to a head when the government cancelled his concert in March last year, Daily Mail reminds.

Azerbaijan’s presidential dynasty has a stranglehold on power. In 1994, Ilham Aliyev was made vice-president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR). His 12-year-old son was recently reported as having bought $30 million of property in Dubai. And anybody who tries to derail this lucrative gravy train gets squashed.

Khadija Ismailova, Azerbaijan’s most distinguished investigative journalist, has been looking into links between the Eurovision construction boom and the Aliyevs.

A few weeks ago, she made it known that she thought she’d found proof.

Retaliation was swift. Someone – she assumes from the security services or with government sanction – tried to blackmail her.

“On March 7, I was sent photographs in an envelope with a note,” she says. “The pictures showed me engaged in sexual relations and the note said: “Behave or you will be defamed.” I went public with that threat. I said I was not going to stop my investigations. I put the threat up on my Facebook page. I didn’t put the photographs online, obviously, as disseminating pornography is a crime and my private life is nobody’s business.”

A week later, a video appeared on a website that showed Ismailova making love with a boyfriend; the website had been created as a mirror image of the opposition party’s website, to make it seem as though they were defaming Ismailova.

But the blackmailers had underestimated their target. “It backfired,’ says Ismailova with satisfaction. They had to back down. I received messages of support even before the video was out, from liberals and conservatives. Even the Islamic party.”

Ismailova complained to the police, but the prosecutor refused to take her statement. Instead, she conducted her own investigation. “I knew the film had been taken the previous summer and knew what angle it had been taken from, so we took the ceiling apart and found the wires in the ceiling – the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room.”

She then managed to track down the telecommunications company employee who had installed the cameras. He could even remember the day in July 2011 that he had done the job. “The government are the only people who have the power to force the telecommunication company to bug apartments,” she says. “I’d just published a piece about links between the presidential family and companies in Panama on June 27.

“A lot of our activity in Azerbaijan happens online,” she adds. “Much more than in reality. Our government can control reality very well so we have all escaped to the virtual world.”

Jamal Ali says, “It’s the only place we can be free. But if things get more serious the government will probably ban the internet too. They want to be kings and queens and we are slaves. That’s why they get surprised when a slave sings a song.”

Daily Mail says: 125 million people will watch Engelbert Humperdinck at this month’s Eurovision Song Contest. But will any of them be rooting for the host nation, which tortures its own people and has one of the worst human rights records in Europe?