Azerbaijan Protesters Fail to Gain Clout

MARCH 11, 2011

By AIDA SULTANOVA
By MARC CHAMPION

Baku

Police in the oil rich Caucasus nation Azerbaijan detained more than 40 people on Friday who attempted to repeat Egypt's antigovernment uprising, even as the European Union expressed "concern" over the government's heavy handed tactics.

A call on Facebook to young Azeris to go out into the streets and take part in a "March 11—Great People's Day" protest against country's authoritarian government drew minimal support. Those few who did turn out to protest were quickly rounded up or dispersed.

Ex-Soviet Azerbaijan is a key producer of oil and natural gas from the Caspian basin, as well as a transit route for the area's growing fossil fuel production to the West. The country of nine million has been tightly ruled by President Ilham Aliyev and his father Heidar Aliyev since 1993.

President Aliyev's government has been widely criticized for failing to create meaningful democratic institutions and for restricting press freedoms. Yet many Azeris seemed unwilling to back an would-be Facebook movement whose organizers, with one exception, live abroad.

"They are a group of students who now live in European countries, where they have a nice life," said 26-year-old Ramin H., who declined to give his surname. "I live here and I don't want to make problems for myself here."

Analysts said the pro-democracy uprisings now roiling the Middle East and North African were unlikely to catch fire in the Caucasus, because the economic and other social circumstances of Azerbiajan, Armenia and Georgia are different from those in countries such as Egypt.

Five young political activists were arrested in the lead-up to Friday's demonstrations on allegations that included drug use, hooliganism, breaching public order and skipping military service. On Friday the European Union issued a statement expressing concern over the "increasing number of reports of arrests of youth activists in the country."

The newly arrived U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, Matthew J. Bryza, said in a statement that the U.S. would "continue to monitor closely" the cases of the arrested activists.

A police statement said up to 100 people attempted to gather in central Baku Friday, of whom 43 were detained and 20 charged with forming an illegal gathering.

In the brief time protesters were free in the street, they shouted slogans such as "Freedom!" and "Resign!" The Azeri Facebook page organizers set the protest date for the one month anniversary of the ouster of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, on Feb. 11.

Separately. Azerbaijan's opposition parties are planning their own protest Saturday. These would call for democratic reforms, respect for human rights and the right to free assembly, said Arif Hajili, who heads the central executive board of Musavat, Azerbaijan's main opposition party.

"I just don't see the critical mass [in Azerbaijan]," said Lawrence Sheets, Caucasus Project Director for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. "What we are seeing is that the authorities, surprisingly, are nervous. They have shown they are willing to go to great lengths to suppress this kind of thing."

To explain why the protests won't gain steam, Mr. Sheets cited rising living standards in Azerbaijan in recent years due to new oil revenue. He also pointed to wide differences in social and political cultures between the mainly Muslim, but secular ex-Soviet nation, and the Arab nations of the Middle East and North Africa.

Opposition parties in neighboring Armenia and Georgia also looking to the Middle-East uprisings to re-ignite longstanding calls for those governments to resign. The opposition Armenian National Congress has called a protest for March 17, after delivering the government what it called an ultimatum earlier this month.

"Opposition leaders use the examples of Egypt and Tunisia, but I would say it is a little bit artificial," said Aleksandr Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute in the Armenian capital Yerevan.

Unlike Egypt, he said, Caucasus countries don't have a vast majority of the population living on a small portion of the countries' land, nor are there "big disparities between rich and poor, and the level of education is very different. It is primitive to compare with these countries with the Caucasus."

He predicted sporadic protests in Armenia, but no real change until elections next year.

Source: The Wall Street Journal.
Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703327404576194611772513434.html.