A new urgent action, and update, from Amnesty International on the case of the jailed Azeri bloggers.

Two jailed male Azerbaijani youth activists and bloggers will have their appeal heard in the capital, Baku, on 22 December. Emin Abdullayev and Adnan Hajizade were imprisoned on charges Amnesty International believes to have been fabricated.

The two youth activists and bloggers were arrested on charges of “hooliganism” on 8 July, after reporting to police that they had been assaulted in a restaurant in Baku. Their arrest came just over a week after Adnan Hajizade posted a video critical of the Azerbaijani government on the video-sharing website YouTube. On 11 November, Adnan Hajizade was sentenced to two years, and Emin Abdullayev to two and a half years, after being convicted in an unfair trial.

On 23 November, Emin Abdullayev and Adnan Hajizade’s lawyers filed an appeal against the verdict. On 10 December the lawyers informed Amnesty International that the two youth activists and bloggers had been granted a hearing at the Baku Court of Appeal on 22 December.

Please write immediately in English, Azeri, or your own language:

• Urging the authorities to ensure that Adnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev receive a fair appeal hearing in line with international fair trial standards;
• Noting that Amnesty International believes them to be prisoners of conscience, detained solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and association, and is calling for their immediate and unconditional release.

I have prepared updated letters to the Minister of Justice, the Ombudsperson and the Azerbaijan Embassy in London.

Azerbaijani youth activists and bloggers Emin Abdullayev (aged 30) and Adnan Hajizade (aged 26) have been sentenced to two and a half years and two years respectively in an unfair trial. Amnesty International believes the charges against them were fabricated and they have been imprisoned solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

On 28 June, a satirical video made by Adnan Hajizade criticizing the Azerbaijani government was posted on the video-sharing website YouTube. On 8 July, Adnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev (who blogs under the name Emin Milli) were approached by two men as they were dining with friends in a restaurant in the capital Baku. The men demanded to know what they were talking about. When Emin Abdullayev replied that it did not concern the two men, one of the men head-butted him and he fell to the floor. The same man then struck Adnan Hajizade, knocking him to the ground, and continued to kick and beat Adnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev until restaurant staff intervened.

Adnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev immediately went to a local police station to report the incident. However, police officers interrogated them as suspects for five hours, denying them access to a lawyer of their choosing and arrested them on charges of ‘hooliganism’. The activists were remanded in custody pending their trial. They were later also charged with inflicting minor bodily harm.

During their investigation the police and prosecutors failed to interview witnesses and to obtain video evidence from a security camera which may have recorded the incident in the restaurant. They also submitted documents to the court which wrongly stated that Adnan Hajizade was unemployed and that he had a criminal record. According to the activist’s lawyers, at the trial the court refused to consider photographs showing the injuries they sustained in the attack, as well as video evidence from mobile phones and the security camera, but provided no explanation as to why. The two men were convicted and sentenced to two and a half and two years respectively in prison. Emin Abdullayev and Adnan Hajizade intend to appeal against the decision.

There is a letter calling for the release of Emin and Adnan, which you can send to President Aliyev, the Minister of Justice, the Ombudsperson and the Azerbaijani Ambassador in London.

The Amnesty November book sale is over and we raised an amazing £3736.56, which brings our total for 2009 to a phenomenal £16,500. Many thanks to everyone who volunteered time to help set up the Church of the Ascension and also sell books on the day. Thanks also to the Ascension for allowing us to take over their church for the three days it takes to set up the November sale. Finally, thanks also to everyone who offered books to the group. We’re sorry that we haven’t been able to accept donations for the November sale. There were simply so many books leftover from June that we were kept busy trying to sell those. I will try to contact everyone who offered books and suggest some alternative places which may be collecting. We will start collecting books again in May 2010.

8th annual Blackheath & Greenwich Amnesty clearance book sale
Saturday 14th November 2008
10am 2009-11-14T10:00:00+0:00 until 4pm 2009-11-14T16:00:00+0:00
Church of the Ascension
Dartmouth Row
Blackheath SE10 8BF

20,000 new and used books at bargain prices. In June we raised a record-breaking £12,500 for Amnesty International UK but we still have thousands of books left to sell. We hope to raise a further £3,000 by selling the unsold books in November.

If you would like to help with preparing for the sale, or are interested in collecting unsold books at the end of the day, please leave a comment using the form below.

You can also find us on Upcoming and facebook. Flyers can be downloaded from flickr.

Vasily Yusepchuk, belongs to a marginalized group; he is a Roma who does not have an internal passport which is a requirement of all citizens in Belarus. He may have an intellectual disability and his lawyer has stated that he is illiterate and unable to tell the months of the year. Vasily Yusepchuk has alleged that he was beaten while in pre-trial detention on two separate occasions in January and in March.

In Belarus, condemned prisoners are given no warning that they are about to be executed, and they are usually executed within minutes of being told that their appeal for clemency has been rejected. They are first taken to a room where, in the presence of the Director of the detention facility, the Prosecutor and one other Ministry of Interior employee, they are told that their appeal for clemency has been turned down and that the sentence will be carried out. They are then taken to a neighbouring room where they are forced to their knees and shot in the back of the head. Their families will only be informed days or sometimes weeks after the execution that their relative has been executed.

You can send an e-mail to President Lukashenka calling for clemency for Vasily Yusepchuk.

Amnesty book sale 2009, originally uploaded by eat your greens.

I’ve been neglecting this blog, so I never posted an update on the Amnesty book sale this summer. The total take on the day was a phenomenal £11,700! Since then, we’ve received some donations and sold the Encyclopedia Britannica on e-bay, bringing the total raised to £12,500. Our highest total ever. Many thanks to everyone who gave up their time, over the five weeks leading up to the sale, to get it all together.

The leftover books, of which there were plenty, will go on sale again on Saturday 14th November at the Church of the Ascension.

I joined Wandsworth Amnesty on their annual Embassy Crawl this weekend, the fourth year that I’ve gone along. This year’s theme was Amnesty International’s Individuals at Risk campaign. It was great to see everyone from the Wandsworth group and a lovely day for a walk through London and lunch by the Serpentine (even with the starlings trying to steal my chips). We visited nine embassies and delivered a letter to each on behalf of an individual or group; India, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Burma, Egypt, Algeria, Iran, Colombia and Syria. I’ve put up a set of photos on Flickr, with links from individual photos to the relevant Amnesty International actions.

2009 Book Sale Leaflet, originally uploaded by eat your greens.

35th annual Blackheath & Greenwich Amnesty book sale
Saturday 20th June 2009
9am 2009-06-20T09:00:00+1:00 until 5pm 2009-06-20T17:00:00+1:00
Church of the Ascension
Dartmouth Row
Blackheath SE10 8BF

20,000 new and used books at bargain prices. Last year we raised a record-breaking £11,700 for Amnesty International UK. I’m not sure we’ll manage that again, but please come along and help us by buying a few books to read over the summer.

This sale is dependent entirely on the hard work of a small team of volunteers and generous donations of books. If you would like to help with preparing for the sale, or would like to donate books, please leave a comment using the form below.

You can also find us on Upcoming and Facebook. Flyers can be downloaded from flickr.

I’ve drafted a letter to President Berdymukhamedov welcoming the news of his release and calling on the authorities to ensure that he is released promptly on 2 May. Feel free to download the letter and send copies yourself. We will hopefully have copies for people to sign tomorrow night during our regular letter-writing at Greenwich Picturehouse.

21st March was also New Year, Nowrouz, in Central Asia. Please also consider sending a card expressing support to Mukhametkuli Aymuradov’s family.  Flower themes are most appropriate, with a message such as “we are thinking of you during the Nowrouz festivities”. Cards should be addressed to:
Mukhametkuli Aymuradovu
AH-K3 poselok Ovadan-depe
rayon Ovadan Depe
Turkmenistan

Update

Wonderful news from Gitti Dunham, Amnesty’s coordinator for Central Asia. Mukhametkuli Aymuradov was released from prison on 2 May.

Open letter to Mr Angus MacEwan living in Lochinver, Scotland

You are the hero, not me

Dear Angus, this is a letter from human rights defender Saidjakhon Zainabutdinov from Uzbekistan, the one who after the Andijan events in May 2005, was jailed for disseminating information about those events.

You wrote two letters of solidarity to me. Being in prison, I could not reply to you and now I am able to reply to your letters, which I am doing with gratitude.

I was arrested on 21 May 2005 in Andijan and faced several charges such as disseminating information against the honour of certain individuals, creating panic, supporting religious terrorist organisation and attempting to overthrow the constitutional system of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The closed trial (almost secret) which took place between 4th and 5th January 2006, sentenced me to 7 years in prison.

I was released in February last year on the presidential amnesty, which is announced in our country every year. I had been in several prisons of our country for 2 years 8 months and 12 days. I want to say from the start that wherever I was kept, the attitude towards me was correct and the conditions were normal.

Whatever the attitude and conditions, a prison is a prison – a citadel of hardship and sufferings. And when a person does not know himself whether he is guilty or not, his sufferings increase a hundred fold. And I had to suffer a lot and live through many difficult days.

Today I am free. After several months of adaptation, I am gradually coming back to my previous human rights activity. In our conditions this is not an easy matter. Because of the Andijan events a new cold war could have been started. The Government thinks we human rights defenders and independent journalists are the cause for all the problems in our society. Of course this is not true. But still I am afraid to become another reason for the worsening of international relations. It is only rank and file people that suffer as a result of this and not politicians.

Unfortunately, there are more than 20 human rights defenders in our country who at the moment are still in prison. The International community talks a lot about them and calls on our government to release them. In its turn our government releases several human rights activists once every 3-4 months. But the local authorities are not in a hurry to release them all. Moreover, sometimes they put other activists into jail. Different orthodox religious organisations are permanently persecuted in our country. We have to hope that in the end our government not by words but by deeds will display its adherence to the principles of freedom and democracy.

Angus, in your first letter you wrote that in 2004 you came to Uzbekistan with a group of students and that you liked our cities of Tashkent and Samarkand and also enjoyed the unique Uzbek hospitality. I read about your impressions and was very proud.

True, our people are very hospitable. We even have a saying “A guest is more important than the father”. Perhaps, I think that the hospitality, which impressed you so much, stems from this saying. We are always proud of this.

Unfortunately, we cannot boast of a feeling of sympathy for other peoples’ sufferings. I don’t mean to say that we lack the feeling of being noble. But it is not at the same level as yours. For example, when I was in prison about 10 thousand letters of solidarity came to my home from 20 countries of the world. Out of this number 4470 letters came from Great Britain! Letters, postcards, photographs, posters signed by thousands of people came from more than 260 big and small cities and settlements of the UK.

I want to note here in the first instance the great contribution by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. They successfully organised an action for my defence not only in the UK but also in other countries of the world. For that I say “a big thank you” to them. After contacting you I need to find the addresses and write to Canada, Moldova and Ukraine where these organisations conducted actions in my support and in which thousands of people starting from little children to famous rock musicians took part.

In another letter, Angus, you write that you were also put into a cell for protesting against the resumption of your nuclear submarines. In the same letter you expressed concern that there is a great threat looming up that the planet has no future at all.

Yes, military submarines are a terrible creation of mankind. During World War II the German submarines “Wolf pack” sank hundreds of British and American cargo ships in the Atlantic Ocean and in the North Sea. The Wolf Pack without any sentiments sank passenger ships as well. In our modern world submarines pose a sudden criminal threat not to the military but to the peaceful population in the first place. If I were where you were I would have joined you by all means.

As for the future of the planet, frankly speaking I did not understand you. If by the word “planet” you mean human civilisation, then I can agree with you. It is true by its unwise activity the humankind can perish itself in the near 300-400 years. But the biological life will come back on our planet and will continue without the man.

I read somewhere that the age of our planet is 4 billion years. During this time the sun has lost only 0.5% of its energy. If this is really so then the biological life on our planet will continue for at least another 4 billion years. I would like to say we live and learn; let’s see. Anyway, even to ponder over something is good. Don’t you think so, Angus?

In conclusion I would like to say a few words about one remarkable man from your country, Scotland. His name is Mr Craig Murray. He was Her Majesty Ambassador to our country between 2002 and 2004. I met him several times. He was recalled from Tashkent due to some talk about his name. But I can tell you, Mr Craig Murray is a real gentleman and his nobleness is worthy of imitating. I imagine you to be like him and I can tell you – you are a hero.

True, I was put into prison unjustly. I suffered and lived through many difficult days. But I am not a hero. You are the hero! Your compatriots and other people in the world who wrote to me “We think of you”, “You are always in our thoughts” – are the heroes.

I am sure at this point you would ask yourself: What kind of hero am I? I live in a small village in the very North of Scotland and have written only a couple of letters.

Yes, this is true. But you and other thousands of such people just like yourself, were saving the life of a human being. In this case you have saved me. The real heroes are those who save other people, I have not invented this definition.

Angus, thank you and your compatriots all over the United Kingdom for your sympathy and support!

A Happy New Year to you! I wish peace and happiness to you and your fellow countrymen!

With great respect,

Saidjakhon Zainabutdinov
Human Rights Defender