South Caucasus syndrome
The Messenger, Georgia
March 11 2005
The Armenian newspaper Aravot (Morning) reports on the murder of one
of Azerbaijan’s most well-known journalists, Editor-in-Chief of the
magazine Monitor, 27-year Elmar Guseinov who was violently killed in
his apartment building on March 2.
The paper writes that Elmar support the views of the opposition and
his colleagues state he had “just declared war on the current regime.
The only weapon he used against the open impudence of the authorities
was freedom of speech.”
Meanwhile, as the Azeri newspaper Zerkalo writes, the adversaries
of Guseinov perceived this war literally, as a result of which the
journalists was shot seven times in the heart. According to Zerkalo,
this murder was carried out by a hired assassin.
According to Aravot, a journalist from Monitor, Einul Fatulaev, had
visited Karabakh recently and as a result of this visit published
a rather reserved article that had caused indescribable anger in
local so-called patriots. “He was under the cross-fire of indignant
statements of the nationalist forces, which called him a betrayer
of the nation,” Aravot writes, “Of course, we do not think that the
Editor in Chief of Monitor was killed particularly because of this
article, however, it could have been the last straw for the Azeri
(and not only Azeri) authorities’ elite, who are the carriers of the
South Caucasus detestable mentality,” the paper writes.
The paper notes that the victim’s family categorically rejects trusting
the investigation to the law-enforcement bodies of Azerbaijan and
have already appealed to European ambassadors for help in finding
the true killers.
Aravot says the murder of Ukrainian Journalists Giorgi Gongodze helped
fuel the ‘Orange Revolution.’ “Armenian journalists were also brutally
beaten on April 5 and 12, 2004 in Yerevan, which can testify to only
one thing: the Armenian regime also is also responsible for treating
freedom of speech with rough force,” the paper writes.