Do not transplant everyone?

Azerbaijan authorities decided to try. Oddly enough, this became the result of the war in Ukraine

Leila and Arifa Yunus are accused of Gosizmen for the creation of an Armenian-Azerbaijani site campaigning for peace. They threaten from 10 years to life /photo from the personal archive of the Yunus family

On September 23, Leila Yunus was beaten. They beaten right in the cell of the pre -trial detention center, where she has been sitting since July. According to her lawyers, Major Yagububov took her into an empty camera, he threw her, grabbed her hair and dragged her on the floor with a cry: “You never wiser?!” Leila suggests: it is because of her letters to arif-he sits in another pre-trial detention center. Arif and Leila Yunus - husband and wife, leaders of the human rights movement of Azerbaijan: the authorities accuse them of state treason - this is from 10 years to life.

Leila and arif in his fate are not alone: ​​over the past year, most human rights defenders have been sent to Baku to bark: the attention of the world has been riveted to Ukraine, and nobody cares about the oil state at the Caspian.

They will come for you

Leila and arif were always strange, a little ridiculous couple. They have been together for 36 years, worked together and had never parted before the arrest. They say that Arif made her an offer the day after meeting - this amazing symbiosis of two different people formed. Leila is an unconditional leader, fighting, loud -haired, slightly hysterical. Arif - a soft, bald intellectual, bookworm, ironic wise guy - always in the shade and willingly recognizes its leadership. Such they are on this black and white Soviet photograph (on the right), shot shortly after the birth of their daughter Dinara: ahead of Leila’s burning gaze, behind her-a touching, awkward arif in knitted jumper and thick glasses.

“When the conflict began in Karabakh (1987), our entire intelligentsia began to go to Yerevan,” says human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkin, “because everyone sympathized with the Armenians. And I went to Baku, I wanted to hear a different point of view. And on the first day I was brought to the workshop of some artist, and I saw Leila and Arif. I immediately realized that this is completely my own people. When there were pogroms (February 27-29, 1988), then the entry of troops, they were the only ones who agreed to write for (then underground) the “express chronicle”, which we did with Sasha Rubrabinec. They ran, collected information, in fact risking their lives. Many hated Russia then. I remember, I somehow called Leila, she told me what was happening in Baku, and suddenly I hear the voice of a telephone operator who, in a rage, begins to swear us-at first: “You b ..., you only take our men!”, And then Leila: “Why are you telling this Russian?! Who are you! They will come for you! " Leila has always been a completely European woman - and this, of course, annoyed many there ... "

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Leila and arif were always strange, a little ridiculous couple. They have been together for 36 years, worked together and have never parted before the arrest

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Leila began a buzzing even before perestroika, was engaged in samizdat, then on a romantic wave, together with friends, joined the Popular Front, a short time even consisted of a propagandist at a stupid new government, and when Heydar Aliyev returned* and covered politics, went to human rights. Together with the Armenian intellectuals, the Yunusa created the peacekeeping organization "Institute of Peace and Democracy", which was engaged in folk diplomacy. It was already a terrible seducte then to openly declare that the Armenians are not enemies. “We were engaged in the release of prisoners, hostages,” recalls Svetlana Gannushkina. - We traveled in prison in Armenia and Azerbaijan, but then they threw it when they saw that the released prisoners Azerbaijan accuses his homeland and plants for a huge time ... ”

Firing list

Then Ilham Aliyev came to power - a weak, uncertain prince, and the country began to slide into classical eastern despotism. In 2005, the leading opposition journalist Elmar Huseynov was shot dead. Then, the distant relative of Leila, working in the organs, told her that they had known the “shot” list of six oppositionists, and she is the second in it. Leila published a list and - carried. The opposition began to shut up-someone was bought, someone was intimidated. One by one they began to arrest journalists, human rights activists, bloggers - drugs, weapons, terrorism. Any consequence was accompanied by torture, and the branded style of the Azerbaijani special services, according to human rights activists, became beaten: brutally beaten in the gateway, and often the victim of the attack was still arrested, accused and planted. It used to be worse: the children of opposition were beaten or planted.

They began to take not even politicians, but simply objectionable-he was arrested as an Iranian spy and the professor of Mammadov, a cultural leader of the Talysh minority, was killed in prison. One of his son was scored to death on the street, at first they threw drugs and planted, and when he went out, the car was shot down to death. Last year, they supposedly for the storage of heroin, his student and successor to the editorial post of Gilal Mamedov (who became widely known thanks to the video “Come on, Goodbye!”).

Once, Arifa was stopped in the courtyard by a house neighbor, the head of the local police department, and asked: “Do you have one daughter, Dinara? I still remember her girl, a good girl. You look, it will be bad if something happens to her. Leila does not understand anything, she is lucky. But Dinara may not be so lucky ... "-" But she is just a child! " - arifted ariff. “That's right, a child, it’s a mother and should think about her.” But this could not affect Leila - she sent Dinar abroad and continued to work.

Yunus opened the only female crisis center in the country that helps victims of violence - 14 thousand women have already passed through it. They defended the rights of thousands of Baku residents, whose houses were demolished without compensation in order to build another skyscraper or shopping center there. Were tortured in prisons and grandfathers, and a campaign for the ban on anti -personnel mines began. And most importantly-with Armenian friends they made the only joint Armenian-Azerbaijani site, campaigning for peace. Arif always openly reported that he was an Armenian by mother - “Therefore, I am not as radical as Leila ...” Any other in Azerbaijan would hide it as the most terrible secret, and Arif said fun, not embarrassed: the author himself saw how the faces of those who listened to him were eager and stretched. He also cheerfully called himself a "Armenian spy", and even the mail began Arif.yunus007.

The main property of Leila, it seems, was stubbornness: all these twenty years she did not lower the authorities, daily, loudly said that she was thinking. And for some reason they suffered them: life, of course, was spoiled, but they did not plant them for a very long time.

In 2008, Leila tried to sue for slander: she was engaged in the case of a gang, who stole the girls for the head of the local police department, who raped them and killed them. The bandits were imprisoned, and the police chief remained free. Leila said that “the gang was only one of the legs of a giant criminal octopus acting under the cover of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” and she began to be judged. But the matter was scandalous, an international noise rose, and Leila fought back again. And in 2011, the day after the publication of their report on illegal demolition of houses, the authorities drove a bulldozer and demolished the house of the Yunusov themselves-with everything that was there: books, working archive, old portraits and front-line letters of his father.

The situation worsened sharply. Over the past two years, about fifty dissenters have been planted in the country. But the Yunusa, which had long become the main enemies of the regime, remained at large.

"Why are they tolerated?" - the author asked Arifa a year ago. - “Yes, maybe they respect that we are not afraid of them? This is the east, ”he joked.

Realists

Of course, they understood that every day they walk under the Damocle sword. Partly, they were protected by Leila's fame - she was advanced to Nobel, she was a gentleman of the French honorary legion, etc. Or maybe for the time being, their existence even suited Ilham Aliyev, creating for the West apparently freedom. But then the need for this disappeared: the current Cold War began, Armenia took the side of Russia and Iran, and Azerbaijan - the USA. Aliyev turned out to be one of those “our bitch children”, and the West, who used to criticized him before, was silent. And with the beginning of the “hot” war in Ukraine, they realized that everything could be in Baku.

In January 2014, speaking in Brussels after a meeting with NATO Secretary General, Ilham Aliyev said that there were no political prisoners in Azerbaijan. Leila immediately published a list of 134 political zones - with a detailed description of their affairs - and transferred to Strasbourg. Apparently, this was the last straw. In May, Azerbaijan became the country of the Council of Europe. And in July, Leila and Arifa were imprisoned - for treason to the homeland. Without any heroin - for a peacekeeping site made together with Armenian human rights activists. Before the arrest, they were not released from the country, they were selected passports. Arif wrote to me, asked for help: to interview so that there was at least some kind of noise in the press. And I was too lazy, I decided that it was not interesting to anyone in Russia. He hoped that they would torment and lag behind as it was many times. And they were imprisoned.

On September 24, US President Barack Obama at the UN meeting said a briefly about the situation in Azerbaijan: the reality is that sometimes the United States cooperate with the governments that do not quite respect the rights of its citizens ...

From the prison letter of Leila - to the arif: “Yesterday I remembered the words of Grossman. He writes about the feelings of the prisoners: “The terrible longing is replaced by meaningless opium - optimism ...” You and I are realists ”

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During the arrest, the arith transferred a stroke, Leila - her diabetes - they refused to transfer insulin to the camera for a long time, did not let lawyers, put it with criminals who hate her. The newspapers were filled with streams of dirt-about the “hidden Armenians”, “Grants-shpions”, “Fifth column”, everything, as we know, is only gaze.

For the first time in 36 years, Leila and Arif broke up. “They never parted,” says Dinara's daughter. - Even when I spoke with my dad on Skype, my mother always called him: “Arif, arif, go, help me. She could not do anything without him, in general to be without him. And now mom is afraid that he will no longer see him - his heart is ... "

The only thing Leila was able to pass through the lawyers a couple of letters for Arif: “Yesterday I remembered the words of Grossman. He writes about the feelings of the prisoners: “... The terrible longing is replaced by meaningless opium - optimism ...” Jews in 1942 transmitted accurate information in the camps: “Hitler passed a hard ultimatum - urgently release all Jews!” And people believed ... believed because they clung to a meaningless opium - optimism. You and I are realists. "

For these spring-summer in Baku, many who were put in Baku-a friend and a family colleague UNUS Political scientist Rauf Mirkadyrov, a calm, reasonable analyst who dared to publish on their website, Intigam Aliyev, one of the best lawyers in the country for the European Court, and a dozen more journalists and bloggers (including all authors of that report on 134 political prisoners, Which Leila transferred to Strasbourg). Someone was cruelly beaten, someone just disappeared. The Council of Europe expressed soft concern - to which the Azerbaijani authorities responded with the grace of Khoja Nasruddin: "What kind of human rights defenders are this, if they are not able to protect themselves even?" - said in the official response, the chairman of the Committee on Legal Policy Ali Huseynli. And Western journalists, sorting out the Baku contacts to write about what was happening, found that they had no more comments on them.

Photo: from the personal archive of the Yunus family