Azerbaijan Police Detain Protesters in Baku Central Square
Police detained several dozen protesters calling for the resignation of President Ilham Aliyev today in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku.
About 30 to 50 protesters, all of whom managed to pass through police cordons into the central Fountains Square in Baku, were arrested and taken away in police vehicles after chanting “Ilham Aliyev, go!” and “Freedom!” Five “organizers and active participants” of the anti-government rally will face criminal charges for damaging public property and resisting police and 70 received administrative punishment for attending the rally, the Azeri Interior Ministry said.
The protest was organized by the secular opposition and was expected to draw more participants. Police, wearing helmets and flak jackets, blocked the streets on the way to the square, preventing any large gathering. Seventeen shops, a bank, a cash machine and 25 police cars were damaged during the protest, which had not been authorized by Baku authorities, the ministry said in a statement to the media. Thirteen members of the police sustained injuries of varying severity.
“We have come out to get rid of this dictatorship,” said Mehraliyev Javid, a 20-year-old student.
Eyewitness reports said police used tear gas to disperse pockets of demonstrators who attempted to break through cordons, and that several hundred youth activists marched through a street headed for the U.S. embassy, chanting “Freedom,” and “Resignation.” Eyewitness reports also say that unidentified people smashed the windows of several shops and banks in central Baku in what the opposition said was “provocation” by the police.
Opposition
The Public Chamber, which comprises the main opposition parties Musavat, People’s Front, National Independence and several other opposition parties and groups, said that a total of 200 people were detained.
Azerbaijan’s political opposition is seeking to replicate the uprisings that ousted rulers in Egypt and Tunisia. Youth activists started a campaign on the Facebook Inc. social- networking website to hold nationwide protests.
Aliyev took over from his father in 2003 in the first dynastic succession in a former Soviet republic.
To contact the reporters on this story: Zulfugar Agayev in Moscow at zagayev@bloomberg.net; Marina Sysoyeva in Moscow at msysoyeva@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net
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