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By Vugar Gojayev

BACKGROUND:

Bananyar is a village attached to Julfa district of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azebaijan. The village is a home to over 4000 people and is one of the biggest villages of the Nakhchivan Republic.

It used to be one of the most disobedient villages against the iron rule of Nakhchivan’s strongman Vasif Talibov, as lots of manifestations and protest actions used to be held there in the past, primarily demands for improving the living standards (electricity, jobs etc). The village has always been singled out as one of the unique villages (alongside with Nehram and Jahri villages of Babek district) demanding its rights and restoration of violated rights.

When Talibov ordered the destruction the tea-houses and shops in 2004, it was the only village of Julfa district that challenged the police who came to demolish those public places. With destroying teahouses, the authorities intention was to block any public gathering places, as they were seen as a source of danger to the local regime. Although the authorities succeeded in destroying those public places, they failed to locate a permanent police station in Bananyar village because of the serious resistance of the village residents. Since 2002, the permanent police unit (around 70 policemen) has been operating from the neighboring Abrakunis village and uses lots of informants in Bananyar village in order to keep surveillance there. Also, what makes this village important is that there used to be large groups of supporters of the opposition Musavat and Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan (PFPA) in the past.

LATEST INCIDENTS:

Bananyar is a relatively conservative village similar to other typical Nakhchivani villages prone to keep traditional Shiite religious rituals. It has absolutely nothing to do with the influence of Iran. It has been so even during the acute totalitarian rule of the Soviet regime. Most importantly, Iranian mullahs are not permitted to enter the mosque of Bananyar, as Iranian mullahs are not generally welcomed in that village as well as many other parts of Nakchivan.

On 27 December 2009, a group of elderly Bananyar villagers came together at the mosque’s yard to commemorate the sacred Ashura day, which is the traditional death anniversary of Imam Huseyn, the grandson of Prophet Muhammed. When the police observed that many people went to the mosque, it became frantic of possible loss of control in the village. One has to note that Ashura and other religious ceremonies in Azerbaijan are always non-violent and there has not been an exception to this rule, yet. Ashura ceremony might be rather emotional with elderly people weeping and mourning.

Police identified the elderly people and arrested 15 of them, shortly after the dissolution of the ritual. That has been the starting point of the tension, when the villagers stood up to demand the liberation of those elderly men, who were kept in the permanent police station in neighboring Abrakunis village. Confirmed sources say that those elderly men were heavily beaten and tied to a tree in the yard of the police station. Tying someone to a tree and beating him up has strangely turned into a common practice among the Nakhchivani police. Two years ago police tied a villager to a tree because that villager had failed to pay the electricity bill.

Over 500 angry Bananyar villagers went to that police station and urged the release of the elderly men. When police resisted and warned that many villagers would also be soon arrested, a young protester, Yunis Aliyev said he would burn himself unless his detained father was set free. Eventually, the young man poured gasoline on himself and burned himself. Police not only failed to intervene, it also did not let anyone else to stop it. The burned man was hospitalized to Nakhchivan city hospital, where allegedly doctors refrained from helping him. Eventually, Yunis Aliyev was taken to the bordering Iran for treatment. There are reports that he has passed away, but it has not been confirmed yet. Allegedly, authorities in Nakhchivan are trying to block any news on that person’s condition of health and his parents and relatives are not allowed to pass from Iran to Nakhchivan.

From December 27 to 5 January, the village was in siege, with no police daring to enter the village. Situation changed on the night of 5 January, when large numbers of Interior Troops, masked Special Forces, Organized Crime Department and police units from many parts of Nakhchivan violently entered the village. Eyewitnesses say around over a thousand government forces started to beat village people in the street and entered the houses in the road-by, used force and dragged elderly women, young girls and men to the police cars and took them to an unknown destination. Many villagers received serious injuries and many local shops were also destroyed and impounded.

On January 6, villagers said approximately 200 people (women and men) were missing in the village. Since that time the government troops have been blocking the entrances and exits to the village and it became difficult to search the missing people. Azadliq Radio (Azeri language service of Radio Free Europe /Radio Liberty) attempted to speak with Nakhchivan’s Interior Ministry and the Head of the Penitentiary System in order to get any information about the number and whereabouts of the detainees. Both government sources refuted the very occurrence of the incident in Bananyar, saying nothing had happened in Bananyar and no one had been arrested. The opposition party and NGO activists (Malahat Nasibova, IRFS journalists etc.) attempted going to Bananyar in order to gather any information, but they said the roads leading to the village were blocked by special troops and nobody was allowed in and out of the village.

Except Azadliq Radio, all broadcasting media remained silent on this development. Neither ANS, nor another TV channels have aired any coverage on the event. Azadliq Radio has repeatedly attempted to ask the Azeri Interior Ministry’s spokesman, and he kept saying that the journalists better addressed those questions to Nakhchivan’s Interior Ministry directly.
Such a behavior shown by the Azeri Ministry of Interior testifies to the suspicions that not only media, but also the Nakhchivani-origined top government ministers in Baku (Nakhchivan clan) are afraid to air any views that might anger Vasif Talibov’s regime in Nakhchivan. Nakhchivan has a status of Autonomous Republic within Azerbaijan and, legally speaking, all the ministries there are still accountable to the central government in Baku.

There are lots of MPs from Nakhchivan at the Azerbaijani Parliament but none of them dare to talk to the Radio Liberty on the incident despite of repeated requests.

DETAINEES:

According to the village people, all women and some of the men were released by yesterday evening. At present, around 25 people still are missing. Those who were released said they were beaten and kept in cold weather and humiliated during the detention period. They were kept in Boyukduz penitentiary, which is in close vicinity of Nakhchivan city. There are reports that some of the missing people are actually placed in mental asylums in a forceful attempt to punish the dissent against the regime in Nakhchivan. This method of declaring a dissident to be a mentally unstable person and forcibly putting him in mental asylum has been used by the Nakhchivani regime before.

THE ARGUMENT OF AUTHORITIES:

Initially, the authorities in Nakhchivan started to link the Bananyar unrest to Iran, claiming that the religious groups of Iran were interested in such a turmoil and financed several elderly people to make it happen.

Since yesterday, government sources both in Nakhchivan and Baku, started to blame Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan (PFPA) and embroil the names of local opposition activists to the incident. It is no coincidence that, Rza Nuriyev, the head of the opposition PFPA in Julfa district is among the detainees and there is still no information about his whereabouts. Nuriyev gave himself up to the police on January 5, when masked police forces took his wife as a hostage and threatened to jail her if he did not surrender himself. According to the head of Nakhchivan city branch of PFPA, the criminal investigation is being prepared against Nuriyev and he is expected to be accused of masterminding the Bananyar incident and serve as a scapegoat for the whole turmoil.

CIVIL SOCIETY AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE:

Many Baku-based NGOs remain silent and draw the attention to the fact that Nakhchivan is a remote area and they have no resources to interfere. Novella Jafaroglu and Saadat Bananyarly (both of them are from Nakhchivan) are some of the very few who seem to be active regarding the case. They have asked for a meeting with the Attorney General and the Minister of Interior of Azerbaijan. According to Jafaroglu, the Interior Minister Usubov said he was trying to calm down the tensions.
There were some reports that the Deputy Interior Minister, Vilayat Eyvazov, visited Nakhchivan to investigate the incident. His aunt, who lives in Bananyar village, is reportedly heavily beaten and injured during the police storm of Bananyar on the night of 5 January.

Opposition media and civil society actors suggest that it would be useful if a group from the diplomatic community in Baku traveled to Nakhchivan and familiarized themselves with the developments there, as Nakhchivan is a particular area where almost all NGOs are afraid and refrain to go because of the security concerns.

The information vacuum is an unpleasant addition to this problem. Villagers are afraid to talk, as all telephone lines are being tapped. The home phone lines were cut. Several villagers came to Baku early this week to meet with the OSCE headquarters in Baky and the Ombudsman office of Azerbaijan. They aired their views and grievances through Azadlig radio, since the government media and information agencies in Baku refused to meet them. One of the villagers in Baku said after the radio interview that he was threatened through a phone call by a village policemen, who said those villagers would be taught a good lesson once they returned from Baku.

The joint visit of the representatives of the international community to Nakhchivan could be useful. Without that, there will not be any fair investigation.
It is important to tell the authorities that police has no right to apply such excessive force against the villagers, even if they were celebrating the sacred Ashura day. It is crystal clear that the authorities were actually worried of the assembly of a large number of people in one place, which is not tolerated at all by Nakhchivani regime.
And it is of utmost importance to attain the release of the villagers who are still under arrest. Efforts should be made to prevent the indictment of Rza Nuriyev, the local chairman of the PFPA chapter. The authorities seem determined to blame all those nasty developments on the opposition parties in order to further terrorize the society and arrest dozens of innocent people.

January 8 2009, Baku
This briefing is prepared by Vugar Gojayev, freelance journalist writing on developments in the South Caucasus. He holds MA in International Human Rights from the University of Essex.