Election (presidential, parliamentarian) campaigns in Azerbaijan are permanently attended by severe political repressions.
The parliamentary election campaign has not started yet; however, the repressions are spinning up:
– On Apr 14-30, 2010 the police detained about 300 citizens in their attempt to exercise their constitutional right to freedom of assembly. The police officers and unknown in citizens’ clothes brutally beat the gathered, among them elderly and women.
– While on duty journalists were also beaten up by the police and cameras broken.
– Contrary to Article 6, the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, judges-executors of a political order condemned 11 citizens over the period of 26-29 April, 2010 under the Administrative Code. Leader of Youth organization with “Musavat” Party Tural Abbasly was simply abducted by people in citizens’ clothes near his home in the morning of Apr 29. Only on Apr 30 he was finally spotted.  Judges with Sabail District Court (Nuraddin Bagirov) and Nasimi District Court (Elman Ahmedov) imputed public order disturbance to law-abiding citizens;
 
–  On Apr 30, 2010 the police detained and beat students attempting to honor memory of the victims of the 30 Apr 2009 terrorist attack (12 people were killed in the State Oil Academy on this day a year ago). A total of over 150 people were detained. They were taken to police stations of Nasimi District with further insults and beatings. After 17.00 on Apr 30 the following detainees were kept in custody in Nasimi District:
13 people in Police Station No 21;
10 people in Police Station No 20;
7 people in Police Station No 19.
In Nasimi District Police Department people in citizens’ clothes beat detainees in the presence of Mammed Mikailov, Head of the Department.
 
The presented facts clearly witness to the lack of conditions for free parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan. The international organizations (OSCE, CoE, EU) permanently deploying missions to observe and assess elections must even today urge the country’s authorities to stop repressions, to restore the rights of citizens to protection from torture, to freedom of assembly and speech, and to ensure the holding of the elections in the atmosphere of stability and freedom.
 
Leyla Yunus
Director
Institute of Peace and Democracy