Nefes LGBT Azerbaijan Alliance is accused of provocation!

Last year when the President of Azerbaijan Republic Mr Ilham Aliyev planned his statement in PACE we implemented the company “Mr President, Give Us an Answer!”. During Mr President’s statement in the EP he was asked the free-answer question about LGBT. After this the President of the alliance was invited to the political department of the Executive Authority of the city where he lived. There he got a dimension to stop such a provocative activity. He was told that mentioning Azerbaijan in such issues is inadmissible.

Despite this, several requests of “Nefes” LGBT about registering as an NGO got turned down. After the request the Ministry of Justice officers contacted the representatives of the alliance in summer in 2012 but the formal answer wasn’t given. Then “Nefes” made a statement that thеy will take the legal actions against the Ministry of Justice because the alliance wasn’t registered. The President of the alliance Javid Nabiyev was again invited to the Executive Authority of Sumgait and was threatened. He was told that if was not stop his activity he would have big problems. Not to sow panic and fear among other members of the alliance these events were not made public. Also, during last year, 3 deputies of the Azerbaijan Parliament stated to the media that LGBT rights could never be recognized in Azerbaijan. All this shows that homophobia is at the governmental level in Azerbaijan.

At the present moment the activity of the LGBT alliance is openly accused of provocation of media. It is already known that in Baku will be conducted the First European Games. Alliance will bring a company “Compete 4 Equality!”. There is no doubts that the purpose of the pressure mentioned above was the company avoidance. So the events which took part after “Sing for Democracy” company during Eurovision in Baku and the experience of the politically motivated arrests point that the authority doesn’t want any problems during any international competitions to be caused. The last arrests also related to European Games and Parliament selections in 2015. First we informed local and international media that we were going to bring a company on January 5, 2015. One month after we published the press release on February 3 there was an article about the president of the alliance Javid Nabiyev and “Nefes” published on 1news web-site

The 1news web-site is acting under control of the Administration of the President of Azerbaijan Republic. In this article the activity of the alliance called provocative against Azerbaijan. We think that this was political action against us. Because this article was published just after some meetings devoted to Azerbaijan in Brussel between NGOs. If we concern that media in Azerbaijan is not free and mentioned above media is acting under control of the Administration of the President of Azerbaijan Republic we will confirm our doubts. Adequately to the media information we made a statement that we will block any activity in Azerbaijan and will continue activity abroad. Because after the latest changes in law about NGOs the activity of the alliance without any registration is outside the law and endangers the members in Azerbaijan. We had to block the activity inside the country. After our statement the mentioned above web-site again published an article agains the alliance and it’s members . In the statement we mentioned that despite the fact that “Nefes” LGBT activity will be blocked inside the country we will continue our activity abroad. We think that the authority will again put us under the pressure when we try to talk about Azerbaijan in any area abroad.

We regret to say that in this information company also takes part the LGBT organisation “Gender and Development”. This organisation is valid for more than 8 years and has the official registration in. There is the opinion of this organisation about us in the given information. It is pity, but it is not the only case concerning “Gender and Development”. Before they were attacking us in social networks forming negative reactions on us among LGBT representatives and boycotting our events. Concerning the fact that they have the registration and financing from The Ministry of the Health Care of Azerbaijan republic we can say that they don’t fulfil the independent activity and can’t share their free opinion without outside influence.

Despite this we believe that problems will be fixed and we will be able to continue the activity in Azerbaijan. Because European Games are very important for us. Despite the pressure and information company against us we will bring our company and continue our activity.