Otkliki Zarubejnoy Pressi

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THE WORLD

17October 2003

2 Die in Azerbaijan Vote Protest

Riot police break up demonstrations after the president's son is declared the winner. Foreign observers say the election was flawed.

By David Holley, Times Staff Writer

BAKU, Azerbaijan — At least two people died Thursday when police crushed protests by thousands of demonstrators, enraged after Prime Minister Ilham Aliyev was declared the victor in an election to succeed his ailing father as president.

Foreign monitors said Wednesday's election was seriously flawed and failed to meet democratic standards. They did not, however, say whether they believed that Aliyev's victory depended on a fraudulent vote count.

With more than 90% of the vote counted, Aliyev had 80% to opposition leader Isa Gambar's 12%, the Central Election Commission said.

Public opinion and exit polls varied widely depending on the political sympathies of the sponsoring organizations. An exit poll Wednesday by the independent Turan news agency and the ADAM Center for Social Research — organizations with a pro-democracy bent — showed Gambar taking 46% and Aliyev with 24%. Those numbers would have forced a runoff.

Based on exit polls and very early results, Gambar declared himself the legitimate winner Wednesday night and called on his supporters to back that claim. When they attempted to hold an unauthorized rally Thursday afternoon in Liberty Square, in downtown Baku, the face-off with police quickly degenerated into a battle.

Helmeted riot police with shields used tear gas and truncheons to fight protesters armed with wooden sticks. Protesters drove a truck into the police, knocking several down. Detainees were severely beaten and kicked even after they stopped resisting. There also was conflict when police entered the House of Councils building on the square and dragged out protesters.

Reporters saw at least half a dozen motionless bodies, including that of a boy, perhaps 6 years old, who appeared to be dead.

Some shots were heard, and a taxi driver later said he had taken a civilian to a hospital with a bullet wound to his leg. Police also used dogs on long leashes.

"The authorities all of a sudden decided to use inappropriate crowd-control means," Gambar said in an interview Thursday evening. "Several people got killed, and there have been many more injured people.

"I think the authorities are doing all this deliberately, aiming to hide the truth from the people and falsify the elections. They want the issue to boil down to that of stability, nothing else."

Ali Ahmedov, executive secretary of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party, said at a news conference that a young boy and an elderly man had died in the melee.

"Radical opposition members have attempted to forcibly change the results of the poll and are now taking steps to forcibly seize power in the country," Ahmedov said.

Kamalua Vagif, 33, who looked on as police cleared the last protesters from the square, said that she and her husband had friends in both political camps and that she had been desperately hoping a clash could be avoided.

"We can't afford to do this," she said, fighting back tears. "We mustn't. We have no right. We are all people, and we don't live in the Stone Age. And even in the Stone Age I'm sure they didn't act like this."

After the main confrontation, police chased groups of protesters through downtown for several hours, sometimes forming cordons across streets or along sidewalks to control pedestrians' movements. At times, rock-throwing protesters forced the police to fall back, but they quickly regrouped and charged again, banging on their shields with their truncheons. Some demonstrators threw rocks through shop and bus windows.

By late afternoon, as the clashes eased, several thousand police stood guard around the House of Councils building and at the ruling party headquarters.

Mubariz Qurbanli, the ruling party's deputy executive secretary, expressed satisfaction with the election results, despite the clashes.

"I think the police are performing their professional duties," he said.

"These people who have staged acts of disobedience in Baku have smashed a number of shop windows and cars. We need to maintain public order We think this week has been truly productive for us. We have won. Ilham Aliyev is a smart and progressive person, and he will carry on with Heydar Aliyev's course."

The elder Aliyev, 80, a former KGB general and member of the Soviet Union's ruling Politburo, came to power in 1993 when the government faced a military rebellion and conflict with Armenia. His supporters credit him with bringing stability and developing the country's oil industry.

Peter Eicher, head of an observation mission sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said at a Thursday news conference that the balloting marked "a missed opportunity for a genuinely democratic election process."

"Many observers did confirm troubling irregularities in voting, counting and tabulation," Eicher said. "These included, unfortunately, cases of ballot stuffing, falsified counting and tabulation protocols, ballots circulating outside the polling stations and interference by unauthorized persons in the voting and counting processes."

Gambar said he regretted the violence, and suggested that his supporters were not responsible.

"We wanted everything to be done peacefully, and we intend to express the political will of the people only through peaceful demonstrations," he said. "It is quite possible that there were some provocateurs among the demonstrators, or representatives of the forces that are interested in the aggravation of the situation in the country so that the authorities would have an argument against the opposition that would justify further reprisals."

Gambar said he had information that authorities were considering arresting him, but that he did not know whether it would happen. His party has not decided on its next step, he added.

"We don't have any public actions planned for tomorrow," he said. "If something happens tomorrow it will be spontaneous and carried out by the will of individual voters."

Times staff writer Alexei V. Kuznetsov contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...headlines-world

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New York Times

After Azerbaijani Election, Streets of Baku Are a Battleground

By SETH MYDANS

Published: October 17, 2003

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Oct. 16 — Thousands of well-drilled soldiers, policemen and special security units charged through the streets of Azerbaijan's capital on Thursday, clubbing bystanders, members of the opposition and others protesting the outcome of a dynastic presidential election.

According to various reports, at least one person was killed and dozens were injured on both sides of the street battles.

The Central Election Commission announced preliminary results that gave Ilham Aliyev, 42, about 80 percent of the vote to succeed his ailing father, the country's longtime strongman, Heydar Aliyev, 80.

The commission said the chief opposition candidate, Isa Gambarov, had won about 12 percent of the vote in an election that observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said "fell short of international standards."

The European observers listed violence; excessive use of force; intimidation of opposition supporters, journalists and others; prohibitive restrictions on political rallies and meetings; severely imbalanced media coverage and manipulation of the voting, counting and tabulation processes.

Despite the overwhelming official numbers, it was hard to find a supporter of Mr. Aliyev on the streets of Baku to-

"You see what's going on!" saiновостной порталoung man standing not far from the scene of the violence, who declined to give his name because "if they find out, they'll fix me."

"There's no justice in this republic," he said. "There's no democracy, no rights. Get this government off our backs. This clan, this mafia, they're just crushing us, all so they can live well."

Another man who did give his name, Huseyinli Israfil, 41, said that he had been an election official and that the official results were "lies, absolute lies."

"Now the country is in the hands of one clan, Aliyev," he said. "The people don't want that clan."

Following earlier opinion polls, he said, large numbers of opposition supporters had been removed from voter lists and had been turned away from polling places. In addition, he said, some government offices had required workers to cast marked ballots and to bring back the official unmarked ballots.

"This is a small country," he said. "Everyone knows what went on."

The anger on the streets was explosive. Crowds of men supporting the opposition charged the police and soldiers hurling volleys of stones and swinging their own riot sticks.

As in the election itself, the government forces were far better organized — deployed and commanded as if on a battlefield.

Particularly impressive was a special unit of interior forces dressed in black body armor that ran down the streets in formation chanting, "Intigam, intigam!" — "Revenge, revenge!"

Having cleared one intersection that was littered with stones and an overturned police car, one senior lieutenant of the interior forces named Zaur raised the visor of his black helmet and said: "Everything went fine. We did O.K."

In Wake of Azerbaijan Election, Violence Erupts in Streets

By SETH MYDANS

Published: October 16, 2003

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Oct. 16 — The battle to subdue Azerbaijan's political opposition moved into the streets today and it was as intense, harsh and definitive as the dynastic victory in a presidential election that was held Wednes-

Once again the chief weapon was the big stick as thousands of well-drilled soldiers, police and special security units charged through the streets, banging on their metal shields and clubbing both protesters and bystanders.

According to various reports, at least one person was killed and dozens were injured among both protesters and security forces, some of whom charged the crowds with white gauze bandages on their heads.

The central election commission announced preliminary results today that gave Ilham Aliev, 42, about 80 percent of the vote to succeed his ailing father, the country's longtime strongman, Heydar Aliev, 80.

The commission said the chief opposition candidate, Isa Gambarov, had won about 12 percent of the vote in an election that observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe primly said "fell short of international standards."

The observers listed violence; excessive use of force; intimidation of opposition supporters, journalists and others; prohibitive restrictions on political rallies and meetings; severely imbalanced media coverage; and manipulation of the voting, counting and tabulation processes.

Despite the overwhelming official numbers, it was hard to find a supporter of Mr. Aliev on the streets of Baku to-

"You see what's going on!" saiновостной порталoung man standing not far from the scene of today's violence, who declined to give his name because "if they find out, they'll fix me."

"There's no justice in this republic," he said. "There's no democracy, no rights. Get this government off our backs. This clan, this mafia, they're just crushing us, all so they can live well."

Another man who did give his name, Huseyinli Israfil, 41, said that he had been an election official and that the official results were "lies, absolute lies."

"Now the country is in the hands of one clan, Aliev," he said. "The people don't want that clan."

Following earlier opinion polls, he said, large numbers of opposition supporters had been removed from voter lists and had been turned away from polling places. In addition, he said, some government offices had required workers to cast marked ballots and to bring back the official unmarked ballots.

"This is a small country," he said. "Everyone knows what went on."

The anger on the streets was explosive. Crowds of men supporting the opposition charged the police and soldiers hurling volleys of stones and swinging their own batons.

As in the election itself, the government forces were far better organized — deployed and commanded as if on a battlefield.

Particularly impressive was a special unit of interior forces dressed in black body armor that ran down the streets in formation chanting, "Intigam, intigam!" — "Revenge, revenge!"

Having cleared one intersection that was littered with stones and an overturned police car, one senior lieutenant of the interior forces named Zaur raised the visor of his black helmet and said: "Everything went fine. We did O.K."

As Azerbaijan Decides on a Son, Cries of 'Foul!' Are in the Air

By SETH MYDANS

Published: October 16, 2003

AKU, Azerbaijan, Thursday, Oct. 16 — The son of Azerbaijan's longtime strongman overwhelmingly won a tightly controlled election on Wednesday to inherit the country's presidency, the Central Election Commission said Thurs-

But international observers backed the claims of opposition parties that the election was marred by widespread and serious manipulations that included ballot-box stuffing, unmonitored voting and removal of opposition voters from the rolls.

With more than two-thirds of 5,111 districts reporting, the electoral commission said Ilham Aliev, 42, had won nearly 80 percent of the vote, handing him leadership of the country that his ailing father, Heydar Aliev, 80, has controlled for the past three decades.

The commission said the leading opposition candidate, Isa Gambar, had won 11 percent of the vote. Saying he had been cheated, Mr. Gambar claimed victory and groups of young men supporting him clashed with the police in street fights late on Wednesday night.

"We think the election was an absolute fraud," said Peter Bouckaert, who represents Human Rights Watch. "In the voting station we went to, 70 percent of the people who voted were not on the voting lists. They tried to take out all the local monitors when they started counting. The electricity went out at the beginning of the counting process."

Opposition parties said their observers had been barred from a number of polling stations and reported that a number of ballot boxes had been stuffed. In addition, they charged that many people had been excluded from the voting rolls even as busloads of unregistered roving voters moved from one polling station to the next.

Opposition parties have asserted that the Aliyev government was manipulating election procedures, repressing opponents and restricting their access to television.

In interviews before and during election day, many people showed anger and contempt both for the Aliyev government and for its conduct of the election.

"No one I know is for him," said a woman working in a ticket booth that displayed the required poster of the younger Mr. Aliyev. "We're not blind. We see what they've done here. He's making himself president. It's all fake. It's a joke."

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Washington Post

Riots Erupt Following Azeri Vote

Protesters Denounce Election of President's Son; At Least 1 Killed

By Susan B. Glasser

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, October 17, 2003; Page A19

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Oct. 16 -- A post-election riot erupted in Azerbaijan Thursday between club-wielding security forces and thousands of opposition protesters who took to the streets to denounce Ilham Aliyev's victory in the race to succeed his father as president.

At least one person was killed and dozens were wounded in and around Baku's Freedom Square after election monitors said there were voting irregularities on Wednesday in this tiny, oil-rich nation, after a decade of authoritarian rule by President Heydar Aliyev.

Aliyev, who is hospitalized in the United States, had tried to engineer a smooth handover of power to his son, the prime minister, and create the former Soviet Union's first family dynasty. Instead, Baku's most violent street fight in more than a decade began just minutes after international election monitors announced that Aliyev's government had not held a free election.

Azeri officials declared Ilham Aliyev the winner with an unofficial tally of 79.5 percent to opposition leader Isa Gambar's 12 percent.

"This election was a missed opportunity for a genuinely democratic election process," said Peter Eicher, head of the largest group of Western observers, from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Eicher said the OSCE found "troubling irregularities" with voting and counting, ballot-stuffing, falsified results and ballots circulating outside polling stations. He said the OSCE had also documented preelection intimidation, unequal conditions for campaigning and "prohibitive restraint on political rallies" held by the younger Aliyev's rivals.

The observers pleaded for restraint. "There's no place for violence in a democratic election process," said Eicher, who had tried Wednesday night to stop police from beating activists outside the headquarters of Gambar's Equality Party.

Not far away, however, the clash was starting.

Crowds of men and a few women moved down Azerbaijan Prospect, past Gambar's office and toward Freedom Square, named to commemorate demonstrations for independence from the Soviet Union more than a decade ago. Many wielded wooden sticks. A few cars and an orange-and-white bus in their path were destroyed, and windows were smashed all along the street.

Individual troops were also attacked by the protesters. One unconscious young soldier was half-carried, half-dragged away from the crowd.

Nearby, several men threw stones at one of Baku's omnipresent billboards featuring a picture of the Aliyevs, father and son, grinning at each another.

Just before 3 p.m., government troops massed on each side of the square, where the demonstrators' ranks had grown to several thousand. As the protesters alternately chanted "Freedom! Freedom!" and "Isa! Isa!" the soldiers charged ahead, firing rubber bullets into the air and tear gas to disperse the protest.

Platoons of blue-uniformed police officers pushed forward until they met up with hundreds of green-clad troops who attacked from the far end of the square, their shields and helmets glistening silver in the afternoon sun. As protesters ran, soldiers and police were seen beating those left behind, often several men at once clubbing a single protester.

By 3:05 p.m. the government forces had mostly cleared the vast plaza and pounded their clubs against their shields in victory, though isolated clashes and roving street fights continued for hours.

Many of the wounded and bloodied limped away on their own. "They call this democracy," said Elshan Abilov, a large man who stumbled down the street with an open gash on his head. His wife's pants were soaked in blood; she had lost her shoes and could hardly walk. "We came to defend our right to vote," he said.

Across from Gambar's headquarters, in the Interior Ministry's Polyclinic No. 1, lay the body of Gamidaga Zakhidov, who staff members said had died in the melee. Several wounded men were scattered about the clinic, suffering from concussions, severe wounds and, in one case, broken ribs. The clinic's windows had been smashed by the demonstrators.

By Thursday night, there were conflicting reports on casualties. Several opposition sources said they had reports of four or more dead. A spokesman for the ruling New Azerbaijan Party said two had died, a child and an elderly man. Hospitals were filled with wounded, including one visited by a Human Rights Watch official, who said there were about 100 injured.

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Chicago Tribune

Azerbaijan vote protest jolts capital

Fraud alleged; demonstrators, soldiers clash

By Alex Rodriguez

Tribune foreign correspondent

Published October 17, 2003

BAKU, Azerbaijan -- Soldiers clashed with demonstrators angry over the results of Azerbaijan's dynastic presidential election Thursday, bludgeoning scores of men and women on the same plaza where their nation's movement to unshackle itself from Soviet rule began a dozen years ago.

At least two people, a small boy and an elderly man, were reported killed in the midday outbreak of violence on Freedom Plaza, Azerbaijan's worst episode of civil unrest since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The clashes broke out hours after Azerbaijan's prime minister, Ilham Aliev, the son of outgoing President Geidar Aliev, was officially declared the victor in Wednesday's presidential election.

International observers roundly criticized the balloting Thursday, contending that it was marred by fraud ranging from ballot stuffing to government intimidation of backers of opposition candidates.

The 3,000 demonstrators who filled Freedom Plaza supported Aliev's primary rival, Isa Gambar. The former parliament speaker had urged Azeris to take to the streets if it became evident that Aliev's administration had rigged the election.

Gambar's campaign aides had regarded the election as the opposition's best chance to wrest power from the Aliev family, which many Azeris blame for the country's crippling poverty and joblessness despite its vast oil wealth.

A playboy reputation

Despite Geidar Aliev's reputation for corruption and human-rights violations during his nearly three decades in power, he was also revered throughout Azerbaijan as a force of stability who guided the country through its chaotic transition from a Soviet republic to an independent state.

But Aliev's son has built a reputation as a playboy who lacked the political acumen to solve Azerbaijan's economic woes, and Gambar's backers saw him as particularly vulnerable.

Trouble began late Wednesday, when it became clear that the 41-year-old Aliev had won. Gambar's supporters massed in the street in front of their Musavat party headquarters, beating the pavement with wooden sticks. Azeri riot police moved in and arrested about 25 people. Several police and demonstrators were injured in the clash.

The streets of the capital, Baku, remained quiet until 2 p.m. local time Thursday, when another wave of Gambar's supporters wielding sticks marched from party headquarters to the plaza, overturning police cars and hurling stones at store windows along the way.

`Ocean of stones'

Once at the plaza, they gathered by a government building and chanted "Isa! Isa!" Two buses with soldiers in riot gear moved in, but were immediately met with a hail of rocks, said Kamalan Vagiv, a 33-year-old Gambar supporter who brought her daughters, 13 and 8, to the demonstration.

"It was an ocean of stones," she said.

Moments later, large phalanxes of soldiers with rubber truncheons and riot shields raced in from several directions. Witnesses said that soldiers indiscriminately swung at anyone, even pummeling the neck and back of Hera Ali Ghusein, a tiny 63-year-old woman with a sun-weathered face and gravelly voice.

"I cried out, `Please, please don't beat me!' but they continued to hit me," Ghusein said. "They weren't listening to me."

As the melee raged, rioters commandeered a military truck and rammed it into a group of soldiers, driving over their bodies. Seconds later, the truck stopped. Witnesses said they believed that soldiers shot the driver to death.

After 15 minutes, police had gained control of the plaza but continued to surround and attack fleeing protesters. One man in a dark blue sports jacket was cornered by a wall and kicked several times in the head by a soldier. Another man was corralled by seven or eight soldiers and kicked, punched and bludgeoned for about 45 seconds as he lay helpless on the ground. Witnesses said police dogs attacked some protesters. Neither the police nor government officials released figures on the number of civilians or police killed. The Associated Press quoted a Baku police official as saying 50 police had been wounded.

Once the plaza was cleared, bands of soldiers moved through Baku's downtown district, barging into storefronts and offices in search of demonstrators seeking refuge.

"This is just a disgrace," said Norway's ambassador to Azerbaijan, Steinar Gil, as he watched a contingent of soldiers march past, beating their riot shields with truncheons in unison. "They simply can't do this."

Standing near the Azerbaijan Hotel adjacent to the plaza, grim-faced election observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe watched the violence unfold. Just an hour earlier, OSCE leaders had said at a packed news conference that Azerbaijan's presidential contest had fallen far short of international standards for a democratic, free and fair election.

Ballot-stuffing noted

The OSCE, which routinely scrutinizes elections across Europe for evidence of fraud and other irregularities, dispatched 600 observers to Azerbaijan to monitor the campaign, voting and tallying.

Those observers noted several instances of ballot stuffing and falsification during vote counting. One OSCE observer, Alex Burnett, said he discovered a letter from an Azeri oil company that simply listed the names of 40 voters and how they supposedly intended to vote. The letter was accepted by election officials and counted.

Government officials also recruited college students to ride on a bus from polling station to polling station and vote multiple times, several observers said. At one polling station, observers saw one student try to disguise her reappearance at the voting booth by changing clothes after she had already voted.

"This election has been a missed opportunity for a genuinely democratic election process," said Peter Eicher, head of the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights

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