By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jan 23 2004 (IPS)

Arbitrary arrests, widespread beatings and tortures and politically-motivated firings of opposition activists followed the troubled Oct. 15 presidential election in oil-rich Azerbaijan, an increasingly close U.S. ally, says a new report by Human Rights Watch.

The repression is the worst the country has faced since it became an independent state after the Soviet collapse more than a decade ago, adds HRW in the 55-page report, ‘Crushing Dissent: Repression Violence and Azerbaijan’s Elections’.

The election of Ilham Aliev as president was widely denounced as unfair and fraudulent by western and other observers.

The new president is the son of Heidar Aliev, a former top official of the Soviet secret police and a Kremlin adviser, who became president two years after Azerbaijan became independent in 1991. The elder Aliev died last month while receiving medical treatment in the United States.

“Azerbaijan is experiencing its gravest human rights crisis of the past 10 years,” said Rachel Denber, acting director of HRW’s Europe and Central Asia Division. “The government must take immediate steps to end the repression”.

The report, based on hundreds of interviews with victims and witnesses in 13 towns and cities during and immediately after the elections, as well as testimonies and press reports since then, found that repression has only intensified over the last several months.

They were capped by U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld’s visit last month, during which he personally congratulated the younger Aliev on his election victory but otherwise refused to comment on the political situation.

“The international community needs to take a strong and consistent stance against the rising tide of abuse”, said Denber. “In light of President Bush’s recent statements on democracy in neighbouring countries in the Middle East, U.S. inaction on Azerbaijan is particularly troubling”.

Despite its vast oil wealth, Azerbaijan remains a poor country, with an annual per capita income well below 4,000 U.S. dollars, and about one-half of the population living below the poverty line.

Corruption under the Alievs has reportedly been rampant, particularly with the investment of billions of dollars by foreign oil companies eager to exploit the country’s energy resources, which are found primarily in and around the capital, Baku, and beneath Azerbaijan’s territorial waters in the Caspian Sea.

Washington has been interested in Azerbaijan as a major future supplier of oil for the past decade. It has played a leading role in promoting the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which will carry oil from the Caspian through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey’s easternmost Mediterranean port.

The controversial project is designed to circumvent Russia and Iran, even though using the existing grids of Azerbaijan’s two bigger neighbours would be a much cheaper transport method.

Azerbaijan was quick to offer assistance to Washington after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and military ties between the two nations have grown steadily. Beginning in 2002, Bush has waived a ban on security assistance to Azerbaijan that was first imposed during its war with Armenia in the early 1990s.

Indeed, Rumsfeld’s recent trip was aimed at intensifying military cooperation and assessing Baku’s willingness to host U.S. military facilities. Washington has also expressed interest in providing Azerbaijan training and equipment, including a Coast Guard cutter, to permit its navy to patrol its waters.

But some analysts say the growing cosiness with the Aliev government carries serious risks, particularly if repression and corruption are not soon curbed. That it had to resort to fraud to ensure its election victory, according to this view, suggests the leadership is deeply unpopular and could be destabilised.

“A failure to fully promote democracy will ensure that the profits from oil production will end up in the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt leaders and government officials,” warned U.S. House of Representatives member Tom Lantos in a recent article in which he argued that Washington faces similar challenges throughout the Caucasus region.

Some days later, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze was ousted in a popular uprising.

But while the Georgian crisis was resolved in a free election swept by a pro-U.S. opposition, the October vote in Azerbaijan was anything but free, according to HRW and other independent analysts.

HRW found that the government prevented many opposition candidates from campaigning effectively – often through police brutality, arbitrary arrests and intimidation – during the election campaign, while, on election day, it carried out a well-organised campaign of fraud to ensure victory for Ilham Aliev, who won some 75 percent of the official vote.

Immediately after the election, protest demonstrations were met by “brutal and excessive force” carried out by the police, says the report. At least 300 protesters suffered serious injuries and one was killed.

Azerbaijani authorities have so far refused to investigate the police violence, let alone punish any of the security forces involved.

In the weeks following the election, authorities used the violence as a pretext to round up nearly 1,000 people – among them opposition leaders and activists, activists of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) perceived as supporting the opposition, journalists and election officials and observers who challenged the fraud, added HRW.

Those detained routinely suffered beatings by police, while opposition leaders held at the organised crime unit of the Interior Ministry were tortured by electric shock, severe beating and threats that they would be raped.

As of last week, more than 100 detainees remain in custody and, if convicted of various crimes with which they have been charged, might face up to 12 years in prison.

HRW called on the government to immediately release all of those detained for political reasons and to thoroughly investigate acts of torture and other official misconduct. It stressed that the international community, particularly western powers, could play a critical role.

Next Tuesday, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly is scheduled to debate Azerbaijan’s compliance with the council’s human rights requirements – an opportunity, according to HRW, for European governments to express stronger concern.

“The assembly needs to adopt a strong resolution making clear that Azerbaijan’s credentials are at risk unless the government remedies the situation,” said Denber.

Azerbaijan was admitted to the council in February 2001.

Washington also needs to convey a clearer message, according to HRW. The administration recognised Aliev’s election victory, even as U.S. observers it dispatched to the country denounced them as a “sham”.

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