Azerbaijan police launch crackdown on LGBTs

Baku: Authorities in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, have begun a vicious crackdown on the city’s LGBT community, according to activists in the country.  Reports suggest that over the past 10 days, dozens of gay and trans people have been arrested. One person the Guardian contacted said he had been beaten in police custody. Homosexuality is legal in the oil-rich, post-Soviet country, but a survey released last year by a rights organisation ranked Azerbaijan as the worst of 49 European countries in which to be gay. 

“There have been previous crackdowns on LGBT people, but this one is much bigger, with systematic and widespread raids,” said Samed Rahimli, a Baku-based lawyer who is helping coordinate legal defences for those who have been detained. Rahimli said he was aware of 60 cases of LGBT people who had been either sentenced to 20 days’ imprisonment or fined as part of the recent crackdown. 

Those currently in jail were charged with resisting police orders. “This is a common charge used in Azerbaijan for arbitrary arrests,” he said. He said many more people could have been caught up in the sweep but not formally charged. Azerbaijani authorities denied that the roundup targeted all LGBT people. Eskhan Zakhidov, a spokesman for the country’s interior ministry said, “These raids are not against all sexual minorities. The arrested are people who demonstratively show a lack of respect for those around them.”