Leyla Yunus: Criminals in power have offshore billions all over the world

The regimes of Lukashenka and Aliyev are equally corrupted and repressive, the director of the Institute of Peace and Democracy said in the interview with charter97.

- Leyla, congratulations on the high awards that you have recently received: the French Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur and the Theodor Haecker prize. Are these awards important for a human rights activist working in a dictatorship?

- I was very happy to receive them. But I also hope that these awards will serve to protect. In the authoritarian regime that we live in, we face repressions every day. You never know what will happen tomorrow.

- Before you became a human rights activist you had studied history and worked as a journalist. Your current occupation involves risks and deprivations. In 2011, the office of the Institute of Peace and Democracy was demolished. The same year, the Belarusian powers arrested your colleague and human rights activist Ales Bialiatski. What are similarities and differences of the situations in Belarus and Azerbaijan?

- Of course, the losses that I suffered cannot be compared to Bialiatski’s tragedy. I always compare the situations in Azerbaijan and Belarus. Something is similar, something is not. If we talk about repressions, political prisoners and prisoners of consciousness, their number is higher in Azerbaijan – about 80. But conditions in Belarusian prisons are worse.

But the most important thing is the attitude of the international community to the authoritarian regimes in Belarus and Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, the geopolitical position of our country, rich in oil, allows NATO to use our airports to transfer military forces to Afghanistan, and to secure a platform in northern Iran. And that’s why the European Union, Council of Europe and the USA support Ilham Aliyev’s regime. Moreover, the sanctions and resolutions applied against Lukashenka’s regime are not used against Azerbaijan.

Another trait that is common for our regimes is the personalities of the dictators. Both Lukashenka and Aliyev deem themselves masters of their countries, and their peoples – cattle or slaves. The masters do whatever they please and nobody can contradict them. No international law or moral work for them.

- When you received the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, you said that “the soviet multinational prison collapsed, but we failed to build a democratic legal society in Azerbaijan.” The same is in fact true for Belarus. What hinders our countries on their way to democracy?

- This is a question that I always reflect upon. I started my career as a human rights activist in the Soviet times as a journalist of the newspaper Ekspress-Khronika, where I collected information about political repressions in Southern Caucuses. When I met my colleagues from Ukraine or the Baltic countries, everyone was convinced that the most important is to destroy the red fascism, and that when this prison of nations collapses we’d be able to build a democratic society in our countries.

Repressions that we suffer under the criminal regime of Ilham Aliyev’s clan make me feel like I live in occupation, when occupants can come and destroy your house, your belongings, kill your family while you are completely defenceless. The occupants possess all the power and commit crimes with the help of the police and security services.

Right after the collapse of the USSR the democratic governments were so weak, which has resulted in the current situation. In Belarus, populist Lukashenka won the elections in 1994, in Azerbaijan there were no elections at all. The people’s front, its leaders and the president gave up the power to Heydar Aliyev, former KGB general and former secretary of the central committee of the communist party. He installed the authoritarian regime. These subjective and objective factors have made an impact, and we haven’t been able to get rid of the dictatorships ever since.

- Don’t you think that the USSR still exists, just in a different way? A new union of dictatorships took its place, but the West refuses to admit it.

- When I meet with western diplomats or speak for international organizations, I often say that today we get much less support from the European Union and the USA, than when we fought against the authoritarianism in the Soviet Union. They wanted the monster of the USSR destroyed. Today, their interest in establishing democracy in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and Belarus is much weaker.

We are told that everything depends on our people, that we ourselves should elect our president, parliament, government and so on. While the democratic world can only approve and support. Of course, on the one hand it is true, but on the other hand, I have been watching Azerbaijan and Ukraine for the past years, and I came to realize that we can get the same situation as happened in Iran in 2009, when a very harsh Islamist regime came to power. When a harsh, criminal, authoritarian regime rules, an enlightened and progressive democratic movement cannot be formed internally. In such conditions, opposition is radicalized, and the West must realize the danger.

- Just like Belarus, Azerbaijan is a participant of the Eastern Partnership. What can you say about this initiative of the European Union?

- Azerbaijan and Belarus completely ignore the obligations that they took within the Eastern Partnership. Unfortunately, the European Union doesn’t have procedures to apply against the rulers of the countries who ignore these obligations.

Hearings on Belarus and Azerbaijan took place in the Committee on Human Rights of the European Parliament on July 21. I represented Azerbaijan; there were people from Belarus, too. There was a very vivid discussion about this atrocious situation. Nevertheless, later at a press-conference José Manuel Barroso basically didn’t say a word about human rights in Azerbaijan, and only spoke about the agreements reached in the energy sector. This reaction of the EU official organs is undoubtedly disappointing.

- National platforms for civil society have been launched in the countries of the Eastern Partnership. Why aren’t you a member of these platforms, and where does this inclination to center come from?

- One can say that I was elected an envoy of the civil society in 2011, at a conference on the dialog between the civil society and local authorities. In June my credentials expired, and it would be unfortunate if my place will be taken by a governmental institution. Today there are so many NGOs in our countries.

As for the platform and center, what you said is true. A bureaucratic approach is in action: the EU countries prefer to work with registered NGOs. But the problem is that in Azerbaijan and Belarus the powers don’t register truly democratic organizations, which means that the EU works with pro-government structures.

- What politics should the West use regarding countries like Azerbaijan and Belarus?

- There should be no double standards, we need a unified position. If the authoritarian regimes do not fulfil their obligations, if human rights are breached in the country, there should be a definite position regarding such countries. Maybe we need a list similar to the Magnitsky’s list. The authorities, who commit crimes against their people, must be recognized as criminals in the EU. They cannot have accounts in European banks or travel freely in Europe.

Corrupted money of the criminals in power, who rob their people and have billions of dollars in offshore all over the world, must be traced down. The western press writes about this, but we need a specific politics to deal with this problem.

For example, now together with our colleagues from Uzbekistan, we are trying to find a way to “retrieve” international enterprises from the dictators. A country like Azerbaijan is no place for Eurovision. Thousands of people live in the streets because their homes were demolished to build facilities for the contest. The organizers and participants must think about how these people suffer when they agree to hold sports and culture events in dictatorships. This is unacceptable.

- They say that human rights activists have used the famous music contest to draw attention to the situation with human rights in Azerbaijan. Has it brought any material result? I am asking this question, because the World Championship in ice hockey can be held in Belarus next year.

- I was among those who started the campaign initially called  ”No Eurovision in Authoritarian Regime”. We wrote letters to the producers of Eurovision saying that blood had been shed on the stage where they planned to have the contest. In their reply they wrote that the Eurovision song contest has no relation to the politics. When we realized that we cannot stop it, we focused on all media that were covering the contest. We asked them to write about the life conditions in Azerbaijan and about how we had suffered from Eurovision, instead of writing about the participants’ songs.

We were lucky that the previous contest had been held in Germany where the media are highly developed and freedom of speech is respected. Numerous German newspapers, magazines, TV-channels and radio stations reported, filmed and interviewed people in Azerbaijan. Germany became our ally because German media provided a broad coverage for the atrociousness and breaches of human rights in Azerbaijan.

But still, such contests cannot be held in authoritarian countries. We need to take our struggle to a global level, to attract attention of the international press. I remember well, when we showed the footage where an old woman was assaulted and beaten by the police, to the finalists of the contest, a journalist asked: “Is it Azerbaijan? Why is she being beaten?” I answered, yes, it was happening in Azerbaijan…