Evolutsia.Net

On November 11, the Azerbaijan court convicted two young activists for allegedly hooliganism, sentencing them for respectively two and two and a half year sentence.

Adnan Hajizada, 26, and Emin Milli, 30 – were both activists in a youth organisation OL! and recently videoblogged on Azeri’s government. This was, apparently, not appreciated by the officials; and a staged provocation, where both young men were harassed, let to their arrest.

Although Azerbaijan is a country with one of the most imprisonment of journalists, I believe this particular case must be seen as extraordinary since it got more media attention internationally, than normally. Therefore, it shows the Azerbaijan government is not affected at all by international pressure, and being perceived by international media as an un-free country, does not bother them either.

This case has got quite a lot of media attention, however, not as much as it deserves. I did not blog about it before, maybe I was naive, and thought they would not be convicted.

These young men, Emin and Adna, are Azerbaijan’s future.The only ones in Azerbaijan who were not afraid, or apathetic, to criticize the policies of the government now and then.

Emin wrote an article a while ago, and I want to quote a part of it, to let everybody understand how valuable they are/were to the country, and what a mistake the government is making currently by trying to shut these guys up:

We have to understand that the world around us is changing. CHANGE is marching towards Azerbaijan from inside and outside. We have to understand that we have to change together with this world. We can not live on and pretend like nothing can change and change can never come to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is one of the countries on the earth which is in need of so many changes in so many areas of our existence. We need to change value structure of our society, we need to change the mentality of corruption, we need to change authoritarian thinking and attitudes in our families, in our organizations, in our society and in our state. We need to open up our society for values of innovations deeply rooted in our ADR heritage and its spirit. We need to bring back those times when we were ahead of many nations not only of the Moslem world but also of the western world on the level of ideas and values. We need to give our people back their hope and their belief in the bright future our nation truly deserves.

They love their country, they want to develop it, and what does the Azerbaijan government do? Put them away. It is a shame.

I truly hope this conviction will not affect OL!’s activities, and they will keep on fighting for democracy, freedom of speech and other fundamental rights.

In addition, we should not setback and watch this happening. For example, on http://www.videopetition.blogspot.com/ you can leave a video, showing your support.