The Voice of Mirza Xazar

On February 19 Eva-Britt Svensson, a swedish member of the European Parliament handed in a written prioritized parliamentary question to the European Commission regarding Mr. Abbas Lisani. In her question (which was also supported by two other Swedish MEPs, Carl Schlyter and Inger Segelström) Ms. Svensson acknowledges Mr. Lisani as one of the most prominent Iranian human righst activists and wonderes what the Commission intends to do specifically in Mr. Lisani´s case and for his release as well as for highlighting the general, cultural and political repression of Azerbaijanis in Iran.
On behalf of the European Commission, Mrs Mrs Ferrero-Waldner on March 16 answered Ms. Svensson´s question. Mr. Ferrero writes that the Commission is aware of Mr. Lisani´s case and that it is seeking further information. The answer also informes that the EU is following closely the human rights situation in Iran, including the linguistic and cultural rights of people belonging to minorities. Through appropriate diplomatic channels, as well as on the occasion of the EU-Iran Human Rights Dialogue, the EU is raising human rights issues and specific cases with the Iranian authorities.

Both the question and the answer can be read on the link below: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/omk/sipade3?PUBREF=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+P-2007-0921+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&L=EN&LEVEL=2&NAV=S&LSTDOC=Y

(Nergiz Nedaei)

AZERBAIJAN GRAPPLES WITH GROWING DRUG ADDICTION
2/23/07

Drug addiction is growing rapidly in Azerbaijan, experts and physicians say, and although the government has made important strides to fight the trend, lingering trouble areas could hamper a correction of the trend.

In the past decade, the official number of registered drug addicts has more than tripled -- from 6,000-7,000 drug addicts in 1996-1997, to almost 20,000 by 2006, according to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Health.

The interior ministry reports that every eighth crime committed in Azerbaijan in 2006 -- or some 2,309 registered offenses -- was related to drugs. Police seized 531 kilograms of various drugs that year, including 50 kilograms of heroin.

One expert, however, believes that the true number of drug-related crimes -- and drug addicts -- is actually much higher.

Citing his own statistical analysis, Mazahir Effendiyev, chief of the United Nations Development Program Law Enforcement Unit in Baku, puts the real number of addicts in Azerbaijan at "not less than 300,000." The number would amount to roughly four percent of the country’s estimated 2006 population of over 7.96 million.

Similarly, official statistics on drug-related crimes, he said, are only "ten percent of the real drug turnover." Effendiyev, who formerly worked as chief coordinator for the UN’s drug prevention program for the South Caucasus, estimates that "at least 500 kilograms" of heroin were sold and used in Azerbaijan last year. "It is a big number which shows how serious the problem is."

The lack of adequate treatment centers for addicts makes the problem even more serious.
Drug addiction was a taboo topic during Soviet times, and remains a relatively new trouble area for policymakers and physicians alike. As elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, physicians say that the light drugs of the Soviet era -- marijuana and hashish -- are giving way to harder narcotics: heroin, cocaine and LSD.

Psychiatrists rather than specialists in treating drug addictions provide most care. No rehabilitation centers exist. The government spends about $2 for the treatment of one addict per year, according to official statistics, noted Effendiyev, "while this figure in developed countries is at least $100."

Physicians and addicts alike point to cultural attitudes that brand drug addicts as virtual lepers as part of the problem. "People are afraid of going to drug clinics because of discrimination by society," commented Dr. Araz Manuchekhri-Lalei, a senior lecturer on psychiatry at Azerbaijan’s State Medical University who runs a private clinic. "These people don’t have any social protection."

Meanwhile, the obstacles for access to illicit drugs are steadily decreasing. In Baku, large supplies of low-quality heroin have pushed prices down from the approximate $50-per-dose norm to as low as $3, said Dr. Shaig Sultanov, chief physician at Baku’s #2 psychiatric hospital. "It has increased the number of potential addicts," he commented. "Not only rich people can afford [heroin] now."

While drug addiction used to be mostly confined to Azerbaijani teenagers from rich families, the country’s middle class -- particularly those who work in such sectors as auto repair and apartment remodeling where incomes are steady and relatively high -- is now increasingly falling prey, noted Azerbaijani State Medical University’s Manuchekhri-Lalei. The government states that, apart from Baku, drug addiction is particularly prevalent along the southern border with Iran and in northern regions bordering Russia.

Target age groups are growing younger, too. Psychiatrist Sultanov says teenagers comprise "the main risk group," though says that physicians also report increasingly having patients who get hooked on heroin or cocaine "when they are already 40 or older."

The causes for the surge, say local physicians and experts, are many.

Pure geography is one. Azerbaijan now features as part of drug smuggling routes running from Afghanistan to Europe via neighbor Iran and from Afghanistan to Russia via the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

Some observers point to reported police involvement in the drugs trade as minimizing the obstacles to supply by silencing public criticism. A 2004 op-ed by political analyst Zardush Alizade that accused the interior ministry’s anti-narcotics unit of working with drug syndicates resulted in a lawsuit that makes "people afraid to openly speak about it," charged Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, head of the DEVAM human rights center and imam for Baku’s Juma mosque community.

The underlying causes prompt greater debate. Hollywood movies broadcast on Azerbaijani TV get some of the blame -- psychiatric hospital physician Sultanov claims that 60 percent of his patients say they first got interested in drugs after watching Quentin Tarantino’s "Pulp Fiction" -- while Ibrahimoglu argues that a pervasive "spiritual vacuum," along with unemployment and related social ills, has made narcotics more attractive.

Meanwhile, debate surrounds what should be the government response. Azerbaijan’s first anti-narcotics government program launched in 1996. The country was the first in the South Caucasus to sign on to the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, and set up one of the region’s first police units for combating drug trafficking. Government-sponsored public information campaigns also exist.

State Medical University’s Dr. Manuchekhri-Lalei sees room for improvement, however. Cooperation among law enforcement agencies, Interpol and neighboring countries is, for now, "formal" and "occasional," he said, while information campaigns are "very unprofessional and primitive."

Effendiyev of the UNDP largely agrees, conceding that "we still lack a conceptual program on fighting the problem." Nonethless, he added, by comparison with its neighbors, "Azerbaijan is the leader in this issue among South Caucasus countries."

Editor’s Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance reporter based in Baku.

(www.eurasianet.org)

Civil Society:
AZERBAIJAN: EX-MINISTER'S TRIAL CREATES POLITICAL SENSATION
Rovshan Ismayilov: 3/06/07

The trial of former Azerbaijani Health Minister Ali Insanov, one of the founders of the country’s ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party, is promising to disrupt the political calm that has prevailed in this energy-rich South Caucasus state since its 2005 parliamentary elections.

From its start on February 15, Insanov’s trial has magnetized the public, and made daily headlines. The 61-year-old former minister played an active role in the 1993 return to power of the late President Heydar Aliyev, father of Azerbaijan’s current leader, Ilham Aliyev, and was once considered one of Azerbaijan’s most influential cabinet members. He was arrested on the eve of the 2005 parliamentary vote, and, along with former Economic Development Minister Farhad Aliyev and a few other high-level officials, charged with corruption and a coup attempt against President Aliyev. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].

At the time, many ordinary Azerbaijanis welcomed the arrest. During 12 years as minister of health, Insanov’s name had become largely synonymous with pervasive corruption in the country’s healthcare system.

Yet in putting Insanov on trial, prosecutors may end up getting more than they bargained for. In a string of enraged statements, the former minister has announced that he is joining the opposition, and threatened to reveal details about government corruption.

“All charges against me are faked. Ali Insanov is a political prisoner and nobody can deny it,” he fumed at his opening trial, local media reported. Insanov claims that his criticism of government policy, and speeches about low living standards that he allegedly delivered at YAP meetings alone prompted his arrest. Prosecution charges that he is guilty of misappropriating some $3.5 billion from healthcare system privatizations are “nonsense,” he contends.

“How is it possible to steal $3.5 billion only in the healthcare system while the entire privatization [process] in Azerbaijan, according to official data, amounts to about $500 million?” Insanov quizzed prosecutors on February 21. The former minister did not deny that his relatives had enjoyed a “green light” for such privatization tenders, but asserted that all members of the government had acted similarly. “Each minister had his own sector where their relatives had all the benefits,” he said. “I am accused of misappropriation, but I have no yachts, private airplanes, industrial facilities and big farms as other government members do.”

In response, Insanov, who has compared his prison term with the 27 years spent in jail by Nobel Prize-winning anti-apartheid activist and former South African President Nelson Mandela, has announced that he is setting up his own opposition party, and threatened the court with “more personal” exposés of official corruption.

“The authorities said they want to have a real opposition in the country,” he raged on February 28. “Now they have it!” For now, though, the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party and government are giving little public sign of unease with Insanov’s threats.

“What has the opposition achieved so far? I do not think that Insanov’s transfer to the opposition would change anything,” commented YAP Deputy Executive Secretary and parliamentarian Mubariz Gurbanly in an interview with EurasiaNet. Gurbanly denied that Insanov had ever once criticized YAP policies during ten years of high-level party meetings. A February 16 press statement from YAP dismissed Insanov’s statements as “political blackmail and slander.”

Opposition media and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondents, however, were blocked from several of Insanov’s trial sessions, although the ban was later lifted. Both the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the United States embassy in Baku are daily monitoring the trial.

Meanwhile, leaders of Azerbaijan’s main oppsition parties have stated that they accept apologies from Insanov issued to opposition Musavat Party Chairman Isa Gambar, former Democratic Party of Azerbaijan Chairman Rasul Guliyev and opposition Yeni Musavat newspaper editor-in-chief Rauf Arifoglu, and say that they are ready to cooperate with him.

But some analysts question the benefits Insanov could bring to Azerbaijan’s relatively weak opposition. “Why should we believe that Ali Insanov will be more successful than, for example, [former parliamentary speaker and current exiled head] of the opposition Democratic Party of Azerbaijan] Rasul Guliyev?” asked Baku-based independent political analyst Rasim Musabeyov. “Everybody knows about his [Insanov’s] involvement in corruption.” One former high-level official disagrees, however. By denouncing the government so publicly, Insanov has given a signal to officials who, like the former minister, come from Armenia, and may still look on him as the regional group’s “unofficial leader”, argued Eldar Namazov, a former aide to the late President Heydar Aliyev and former head of the opposition election alliance YeS.

“Regionalism is a serious factor in Azerbaijani politics,” Namazov said. “If people originally from Armenia will be active in [Insanov’s] party at the [presidential] elections in 2008, for the first time since 1993 we will have a situation when this regional group [from Armenia] will support the opposition.” Azerbaijanis from Armenia, known as Yez-Ar, are among the most active groups in the country’s political life. Among their number are Parliamentary Speaker Ogtay Asadov and Prime Minister Artur Rasizade.

Analyst Musabeyov and Zafar Guliyev, an analyst with the pro-opposition Turan Analytical Group, disagree with Namazov, however.

“The regional factor is important in Azerbaijani politics, but we should not exaggerate the consolidation of this regional group,” said Musabeyov. “We cannot say that the entire group is centered around Ali Insanov.”

Basing Insanov’s planned opposition party around a regional association would be “a mistake,” added Guliyev. “It will be very difficult to change power in Azerbaijan only by using the support of a regional clan,” he said. “The factor of social discontent in Azerbaijan is much more important. But it is still a question whether the ex-minister will be able to use this factor properly.”

So far, public displays of support for Insanov have been relatively limited.

At a February 19 press conference in Baku, Rizvan Talibov, leader of the Movement for Return to Western Azerbaijan, a group of Yer-Az, demanded the minister’s release and pledged to start demonstrations “as soon as Insanov gives us the signal.” A group of doctors who call themselves the ex-minister’s “followers” and former colleagues have also appealed to President Aliyev to release Insanov.

The muted public response, however, is unlikely to faze or quiet the embittered ex-health minister. As he warned prosecutors at his February 28 trial: “[I]t is not a good idea to make Insanov angry.”

Editor’s Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance reporter based in Baku.

(www.eurasianet.org)