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BAKU. August 19, 2011: Solida Movlayeva, mother of the imprisoned Facebook activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, addressed a letter to the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, graduate from the Harvard University, was imprisoned under the charges of evading military service after he returned to Azerbaijan to participate in the parliamentary elections of November 2010. Below is the full text of the letter:

"Dear Madam Secretary,

I am writing to your office in the hope that you can extend assistance to my plight. I am imploring to you as a mother to another mother. Please imagine yourself as an ordinary citizen whose son or daughter was charged and imprisoned for criticizing an authoritarian government’s policies and voicing her concern about the sufferings of the people during his election campaign for the parliament and in his Facebook page. Imagine the fear you felt when all the evidence that proves his innocence is discarded by the court all because the courts themselves follow the orders of this government thus penalizing your son or daughter with a two-year prison term. Madam Secretary, this is the situation I and my family faced beginning March, 2011.

My son Bakthiyar Hajiyev was sentenced to two years for expressing his views and calling for freedom and democracy in Azerbaijan. It was always his belief that it is the moral responsibility of the youth to carry on the vision which the founders of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic in 1918 founded our country upon. It was also our republic which granted suffrage to women while the United States itself was still struggling for this right. Democracy although short-lived burned in our hearts then, it still burns fiercely up to the present.

He has a pre-existing eye condition called “pteridium” which has worsened in the last few weeks due to extremely harsh conditions in the prison facility but he is continuously denied competent medical assistance, as well as occasionally denied meetings with his lawyers and friends.

My son is a man who holds the same ideals that made the United States great. He so wanted to help transform Azerbaijan into a truly democratic and prosperous country. Bakhtiyar knows that a better future is possible and it is every citizen’s responsibility to contribute to this future.

Bakhtiyar is one of many Azerbaijani youths fortunate enough to study in the U.S. and thus experience living in a truly free and open environment but returned to his home country where human and constitutional rights were suppressed firstly by the former Soviet Union and now Soviet-minded bureaucrats who govern the country. Presently they are treating Azerbaijan as a police state where everything is under their tight control. Free thought is blasphemy and the individuals who dare express the truth are put in jail under trumped up charges. The people are powerless and recently, the government agents have brazenly started to physically attack people of the foreign press as well as NGOs, not to mention local journalists and human rights defenders.

Local TV channels in Azerbaijan have been doing everything to discredit my son who recently ran for a seat in our Parliament. It aired slanderous insinuations that questioned his patriotism by accusations of dodging his military duty as well as their open ridicule of his Harvard degree among others.

Madam Secretary, I am proud of my son for his deeds but I am also very worried about his incarceration in one of the most infamous prisons in Azerbaijan. We cannot trust anyone in this regime. We citizens are held in bondage of a government that persecutes us for doing what is right. We have no other recourse but to seek outside help. But all the petitions from abroad as well as support from NGOs have brought no outcome. We implore you not to fail us Madame Secretary. You are our last hope. As one mother to another, please help me.

Sincerely,

Solida Movlayeva

Ganja, Azerbaijan

August 16, 2011”