Institute for War & Peace Reporting IWPR, UK
Nov 13 2009

Azerbaijan wrestles with nationality poser

Young Armenian, born in Azerbaijan, faces bureaucratic struggle to
gain citizenship rights.

By Aytan Farhadova in Baku and Mammad-Sadiq Fataliyev in Sheki (CRS
No. 519, 13-Nov-09)

Akif Abishov just wants to be an ordinary Azeri young man, but he has
an awkward secret in a country that still lacks diplomatic relations
with Armenia. He is an ethnic Armenian.

He was handed to a state children’s home in the town of Sheki in 1988,
the year when growing ethnic tensions forced many Armenians to leave
Azerbaijan, and his relatives left him behind when they fled.

He has no documents to confirm his identity, but such documents might
do more harm than good, since his real name ` Artur Avakyan `
identifies him clearly as an Armenian.

He left the children’s home when he turned 18 in 2002 and since then
has appealed to numerous state bodies for help in securing documents,
but without results. His only ally has been Khalida Bayramova, deputy
head of the administration in the Sabail region of Baku.

"I am very grateful to Khalida khanum," he said, using the respectful
Azeri term for a woman. "Only she has sympathised with me. She found
me this accommodation, and helps with money. But every time when I ask
about documents, she tells me to be patient, that work is going on.
But the years are passing.

"I had a high school diploma in the name Akif Abishov, and when I went
and asked for documents they took it from me, supposedly to use in
preparing them. Now I only have a copy of it and I have never seen the
birth certificate where I have an Armenian name."

Without documents, Abishov cannot travel, make a doctor’s appointment,
receive state benefits and much more. Azerbaijan has inherited the
bureaucracy-heavy Soviet system, and it is impossible for him to enjoy
the rights of a citizen without being able to confirm his identity.

Bayramova herself told IWPR that the young man’s fate was unresolved
because it raises so many legal and ethical questions, and officials
are not sure how to proceed. Their indecision, combined with the
problems caused by his lacking the papers required to receive identity
documents, has left him in a legal limbo.

"This question is being discussed in the government, in the
president’s administration, in the parliament in the ministries of
justice, internal affairs and national security," she said.

"This is a political question, and publicity for this question will
just harm Akif himself. Of course, he is not to blame that he is an
Armenian, but a fact is a fact.

"We do not know what name to put in documents for him. We cannot make
them in his Azeri name. But to go around Azerbaijan with an Armenian
name is a death sentence. Or else he could just be deported from the
country."

According to Arif Yunus, a specialist in conflict resolution and
co-founder of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, there were just
25 Armenian men with typically Armenian surnames living in Baku in
1999, but that did not mean Akif Abishov did not deserve documents.

"Not giving documents to someone for reasons of ethnicity is a
violation of the law," he said.

A spokesman for the ministry of national security denied any knowledge
of the case and referred IWPR to the ministry of the interior, where a
spokesman in turn denied any knowledge.

"If the person you are speaking about appealed in the correct manner
to the ministry of the interior then, independently of his ethnicity,
he could receive documents confirming his identity," the spokesman
said.

Bayramova said there are three other young Armenian men in the same
position as Abishov. One works as a hairdresser, a second has been
adopted by an Azeri family, and the third still lives in a children’s
home despite being 23 years old.

IWPR visited the children’s home where Abishov lived until the age of
13, before he was moved to Baku, and discovered a letter confirming
his real name as Artur Avakyan, and his year of birth as 1984. But
there was no information as to the identity of his parents, since his
birth certificate had vanished somewhere along the way.

Fazil Mustafa, a member of parliament and chairman of the Party of
Great Creation, said documents should be provided for Abishov without
delay, and that the young man would then be able to move freely.

"If he wants Akif could then move to another country," he said,
perhaps expressing a broader wish among officials to get rid of the
problem.

But Abishov himself does not want to leave, and just wants to live
like any other young man in Baku.

"I have recorded on my phone a quote from Heydar Aliyev," he said,
referring to the father of the current president of Azerbaijan who
headed the country until 2003.

"It says ‘I have always been proud and am still proud that I am from
Azerbaijan’, and I listen to it all the time. I was born here, I know
Azeri as my native language. I want to work and to live in Azerbaijan,
I don’t want to leave my homeland," he said.

Aytan Farhadova is a journalist with Express newspaper. Mammad-Sadiq
Fataliyev is a freelance journalist.