The Voice of Mirza Xazar

Elmar Husseinov's Brazen Legacy

By Chloe Arnold (The Moscow Times) March 5, 2005

I first met Elmar Husseinov, the editor of Monitor magazine who was killed outside his flat in Baku this week, three years ago. He'd telephoned me to ask whether I could write a story about his beleaguered publication, which was being hounded by the authorities. An hour later the doorbell rang, and a huge bear of a man in a dark suit, with a battered sheaf of papers under one arm, stood outside. We sat down in my office for coffee -- "No sugar for me, thanks," Husseinov said, pointing to his ample stomach and sighing -- and he told me about the difficulties of bringing out a satirical magazine in Azerbaijan today. Husseinov was a larger-than-life figure in every sense. Twice a month he took on the authorities in his irreverent publication, exposing blackmail, corruption and sleaze at the highest levels. And it wasn't just the government he laid into -- he was as scathing of the leaders of the opposition in Azerbaijan as of the president. It all began in the early 1990s, when Husseinov returned from Siberia, where he'd been working as an engineer building a hydroelectric dam, to look after his ailing father. He'd always enjoyed writing, and someone suggested he submit an article to a local paper. Very soon he started publishing his own tabloid newspaper. It was full of scurrilous tales of the sexual escapades of various Cabinet ministers. It suited his character perfectly: There was always a mischievous twinkle in his eye, he hated dishonesty, and he loved to laugh at and, even more, to prick inflated egos. It goes without saying that people loved it, and Husseinov found himself running a successful business. He quickly branched out and set up his own printing press. Inevitably, the subjects of Husseinov's scandalous articles were not pleased, and lawsuits for libel rained down on his newspaper. The courts ruled against him -- not surprising in a country where judges generally do what they are told by the authorities. Husseinov was forced to close the tabloid, and his editor fled to Moscow, fearing arrest. It was only then that he decided to bring out Monitor, an altogether darker, more serious and more daring publication, which poked fun at senior members of the government, right up to the then-President Heydar Aliyev. Among other things, he investigated how it was that ministers could afford to own dachas the size of Venetian palaces on the Caspian Sea shore with the modest salaries they claimed to earn. The lawsuits started arriving again, and after a year, Monitor was taken off the shelves. Husseinov was forced to print in Turkey and smuggle his magazines into Azerbaijan through Georgia in the back of a vegetable truck. For the next few months, he sold copies of Monitor from his kitchen, until the authorities calmed down enough to allow him to sell it legally again. But his exposes continued to land him in hot water, and he was taken to court half a dozen times over the next eight years, fined heavily and even sent to prison for six months. What really irritated the people at the top, Husseinov told me as he eyed the plate of biscuits, was that everyone read his magazine. "It used to drive old Heydar nuts," he chuckled. "When he came into his office in the morning, half a dozen of his minions would rush to hide the copy of Monitor they'd just been devouring. It was like an irritating mosquito he just couldn't swat." The issue I remember most vividly was the one with "Godfather!" emblazoned on the cover. Beneath it, the face of Heydar Aliyev had been superimposed onto the body of Don Corleone, the godfather of Francis Ford Coppola's legendary films about the Sicilian mafia. It was a great read. Husseinov described how the president and his cronies wore immaculate designer suits made in Italy -- not the kind most ordinary Azeris wear, whose labels read "Made in Italian" -- and how the area of Nakhchivan, where Heydar Aliyev grew up, was like a little Sicily, where extortion and punishment beatings were everyday occurrences. Husseinov was fined $20,000 for writing the article. He didn't pay. The authorities said they would confiscate his property instead, but he laughed and told me he'd already sold anything of any value to pay off the previous fines. So why, after years of annoying the powers that be with his publications, did someone suddenly decide that Husseinov had to go? I was especially shocked to hear the news because I know that for the past year or so, the authorities have been going easy on Monitor, perhaps because of pressure from democracy watchdogs like the Council of Europe and press freedom groups, who had picked up Husseinov's case. Monitor had started coming out every week, it was on sale more or less openly, and the exiled editor of his defunct tabloid was even considering coming back home. Perhaps someone's patience snapped, or Husseinov just happened to offend the wrong person. Maybe he was a pawn in some Byzantine power struggle inside Azerbaijan's ruling elite. Maybe, as the authorities are saying, his murder was a provocation aimed at implicating the government of Ilham Aliyev. Ilham, by the way, is Heydar's son, and he became president after an election that international observers, foreign governments and, of course, Monitor say was tarnished by fraud. I don't know why Husseinov was killed, and I fear that we are unlikely ever to know for sure. What I do know is that this week, Husseinov's luck ran out, and whoever or whatever had been protecting him for the last 10 years was unable to prevent his brutal murder. In the early hours of Thursday morning, Azerbaijan's most famous journalist, who always saw the funny side of things, was shot seven times at close range outside his father's flat. The question now is what happens to his legacy. Some of the opposition have seized on Husseinov's murder as further evidence of the authorities' crackdown on media freedom and have vowed to turn Husseinov's funeral into a march on the government. They are probably hoping to emulate Georgia and Ukraine, where the killings of prominent anti-establishment journalists -- Georgy Sanaya and Heorhiy Gongadze, respectively -- sowed the seeds of popular discontent with the governments and culminated in bloodless revolutions. But Husseinov wouldn't have wanted that. He scoffed at Azerbaijan's weak and fractured opposition -- which has been unable to solve its petty differences to provide any real challenge to Ilham Aliyev -- as much as he sneered at the Aliyev dynasty itself. He would likely say these people were trying to hijack his memory. What Husseinov would have wanted would be for Monitor to survive. He'd want it to continue to roast Azerbaijan's politicians and keep racking up lawsuits against it. He has a talented No. 2 at the magazine, Eynulla Fatullayev. Fatullayev was knocked unconscious last summer by unknown assailants. The greatest tribute to Elmar Husseinov would be if Fatullayev and his colleagues were to keep the much-loved Monitor alive and kicking.

Chloe Arnold, a freelance journalist based until last year in Baku, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.