Azerbaijani police have forcibly confiscated an EU flag from an activist during Independence Day celebrations in Novkhani, a town located just north of Baku, saying that ‘this is not Azerbaijani flag’.
Novkhani is the birthplace of Mahammad Amin Rasulzade, the first leader of the short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, which existed between 1918–1920. Every year, opposition-aligned groups gather there to celebrate Azerbaijan’s independence.
On Thursday, Azerbaijani opposition forces continued this tradition, holding a rally near a monument to Rasuladze. There, opposition members delivered a speech accompanied by chants of ‘Freedom, Rasulzade, Ali-bay’, the latter in reference to the imprisoned head of the opposition Popular Front Party (PFP), Ali Karimli.
A video shared by the media outlet Azadliq taken during the rally shows a woman unfurling an EU flag, attempting to take a photo with it. At this point, police — who had previously been watching the rally from the sidelines — surrounded the demonstrator, asking the woman to hand the flag over. After she refused, they forcibly took the flag from her, stating that it is not an Azerbaijani flag as part of their reasoning.
Following this, the rest of the rally continued peacefully, with no arrests.
A ‘virtual’ holiday
While the authorities objected to the EU flag on the basis that it was not Azerbaijani, opposition activists soon noted that Baku itself was not decorated during the holiday, despite flags often being flown for official state visits.
‘But today is Independence Day, and the city is completely unadorned. There’s not a single Independence Day programme on television. It’s clear the government doesn’t recognise our independence; the government doesn’t like anything or anyone who bears the name of independence. Being independent is a crime and anathema in the eyes of the government’, former journalist Namig Huseinov wrote on social media.
Speaking to OC Media, PFP member Seymur Hazi stressed that the authorities were only approaching this holiday ideologically, ‘which is incorrect’.
‘That is, [the government] believes that if they celebrate this day, it will contradict the [ruling] New Azerbaijan Party’s concept, which links the issue of state-building since 1993 to [President Ilham Aliyev’s father and former president] Heydar Aliyev. This is wrong’, Hazi says.
He notes that the documents on restoring independence in 1991 explicitly refer to the creation of an Azerbaijani state in 1918, and the structures that were created then. However, he believes this causes a problem for the government because ‘if the institutional values of the [Azerbaijan Democratic] Republic are popular in Azerbaijan, that means parliament, municipalities, and electoral bodies — all of them — must be pluralistic, and must be highly factionalised’.
‘The government doesn’t want this’, he concludes, claiming this is the reason why Baku and other areas were not decorated.To mark Independence Day, Aliyev and his wife, Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva, shared their holiday greetings on social media. Aliyev also visited Nagorno-Karabakh and attended the opening ceremonies of several companies in Stepanakert (Khankendi) and Khojali.
