The European Court of Human Rights has passed a verdict clearing Eynulla Fatullayev of the charges maintained by the Azerbaijani government and has demanded the journalist’s immediate release from jail.
With the court hearing on Eynulla’s case underway today at the Court of Appeal, a large group of internally displaced people (IDP)/refugees were deployed by the authorities to the front of the court. The crowd of IDPs chanted slogans against Eynulla and urged the Court to keep him jailed indefinitely and ask the President to withdraw Fatullayev’s Azerbaijani citizenship as "he had insulted and dishonoured the IDPs in his articles written in 2005". The IDPs say they were learnt from the media about today’s court proceedings, so they came to protest against Fatullayev.
The reality, however, is different and far uglier than this. IDPs are the poorest, muzzled and most vulnerable people in Azerbaijan. Having lost their homes in an Armenian-Azeri conflict over Garabagh, most of these people live in temporary residence places waiting for the end of the conflict when they can return to their homes.
The "instrumentalisation of IDPs as a political tool" is a frequently-used tactic in Azerbaijani politics by the current government. No doubt that these protesting IDPs have been organized, orchestrated and brought to the front of the Court by the authorities. In the past, during many pre-election periods, the Baku authorities effectively used various IDP groups to damage the reputation of the opposition party candidates and government critics. In the campaigning period of the presidential elections of 2003, authorities used IDPs to prevent and obstruct the opposition rallies, particularly in the regions. There is strong evidence that some pro-opposition IDPs were excluded from the monthly government aid and other social benefits they were supposed to receive because of campaigning and voting for the opposition party candidate in the 2003 presidential elections.
Their poor living conditions, weak organizational skills, over-dependence on the government, have left the IDPs with almost no opportunity to participate in the political life of the country. Instead, they remain under strict authority surveillance. Theus, IDPs have no voice of their own. Azerbaijan has the world’s largest IDP population on a per capita rate. But despite their large number, they have next to no influence in Azerbaijani politics. Opposition newspapers and Radio Liberty’s Baku Bureau remain the only space for the IDP activists to air their views. But the opposition-leaning newspapers are not allowed to be distributed in the collective settlements of rural IDPs.
Very often, the authorities use the plight of IDPs as a shield against the international criticisms on the government’s poor human rights record. The argument usually follows the line “if the international organizations care so much about human rights, why won’t they first settle the Garabagh problem, so that many IDPs can return to their homes.” As a political tool, this method is aimed at diverting the attention from rule-of-law, human rights and democracy concerns. As a counter-attack argument against the international critics, the government accuse international organisations of “not talking of the plight of IDPs”, but focusing on the “few human rights violations and cases of journalists”.
