22:18, 28 April 2003

Office of human rights activists is being smashed up in Baku

The situation in Azerbaijan is getting out of hand. It is already a week since the authorities has started to unleash a hysterical campaign against human rights activists and first of all against Eldar Zeynalov and Arif and Leyla Yunusovs as the ?enemies of the Azerbaijan people who sold themselves to the Armenians?.

Already on Friday the deputy of the parliament from the ruling New Azerbaijan Party Bakhar Muradova called on everybody to go and smash up Yunusov?s office on Monday. And a large crowd (30-40 people) of women from the New Azerbaijan Party has been smashing the office (38 Shamsi Badalbeyli Street) for an hour already.

They have already broken the panes, pelted the walls with eggs. They are trying to rush inside, breaking the doors.

There are two women and one man inside the office. They are holding out for the time present. There are police-officers in the street, there is even a police post near the office, since they guard the Jewish synagogue located nearby.

But policemen do not interfere as usual. Everything looks like it was at the time of the Armenian pogroms in January 1990.

Source: Institute of Peace and Democracy (Azerbaijan)