Azerbaijani police force refugees off road after protest over eviction plans
By AIDA SULTANOVA
The Associated Press
06/02/05 12:19 EDT
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – Azerbaijani police forced a crowd of angry
refugees off a road they had blocked Thursday to protest efforts
to evict them from the homes where they moved after being displaced
by war.
About 30 people, mostly women, blocked a road on the outskirts of the
capital Baku to try to attract the attention of President Ilham Aliev,
who they said often travels along the route.
Police physically forced the protesters off the road after they
refused to budge, and some said they were treated brutally. One woman
was bleeding from her chest and said she had been kicked and dragged
by police after fainting.
The protesters said they are being evicted from houses they moved
into after fleeing their homes over a decade ago during a war with
Armenian forces over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, which drove about
1 million people from their homes.
Many Azerbaijanis displaced by the six-year war, which ended in a
cease-fire in 1994 and left Nagorno-Karabakh and a chunk of surrounding
territory in ethnic Armenian control, still live in temporary housing.
Protester Mirvari Agayeva said several displaced families had moved
into privately built homes they bought in 1993, along a railway line
used to transport oil products. But she said a nearby oil refinery
that claims to own the land has been trying to evict them for months.
They recently received letters from its director ordering them out
immediately, she said.
“Let them give us apartments and we will move out,” said Mirvari
Orujeva, a 66-year-old woman who lives with three of her nine children
and several of her 28 grandchildren in a cluster of small buildings
totaling seven rooms.