Azerbaijan detains writer Akram Aylisli at airport on way to festival - The Guardian

The Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli, who saw his books burned and endured calls for his ear to be cut off four years ago after writing about massacres of Armenians, has reportedly been prevented from travelling abroad to an Italian literary festival.


Aylisli was a popular writer in Azerbaijan until the publication of his 2012 novella Stone Dreams, which told of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the 20th century, and of the massacres of Armenians by Azeris. He was due to speak at the Incroci di Civiltà festival in Venice on Thursday, but the Armenian news agency Armenpress reported on Wednesday that he had been detained by airport police at Baku airport.


Officials whom I have known for years are still frightened to say hello to me... My children lost their jobs


Akram Aylisli, interviewed in Index on Censorship


The Turan news agency, quoting the ministry of internal affairs, said the detention was "in connection with the conflict he had stirred with the staff of the border service".


Before he published Stone Dreams, Aylisli had been awarded a host of prizes in Azerbaijan. But the release of the story saw his title of People's Writer withdrawn, his pension revoked and his writing removed from school curriculums. His wife and son lost their jobs, his books were burned and a reward was offered to anyone who would cut off his ear.


Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship, which publishes a new story written by Aylisli in its latest magazine, told the Guardian: "Azerbaijan's recent record of detaining its critics looks to continue with the detention of playwright and novelist Akram Aylisli at Baku airport today... We hope that the interior ministry will quickly reconsider this detention and release this important writer."


Rebecca Vincent, coordinator of the Sport for Rights campaign , which works to draw attention to human rights issues in Azerbaijan, confirmed that Aylisli was still being detained, and that the writer was with his son. Vincent said that Aylisli's detention "shows that the vicious cycle of politically motivated arrests continues in Azerbaijan, undermining any goodwill generated by the releases of 16 political prisoners over the past two weeks".


"On the very day that Azerbaijani President Aliyev arrives in Washington, DC, hoping for an audience with President Obama, his regime continues his dirty work at home, targeting government critics," said Vincent. "We call for Aylisli's immediate and unconditional release, along with the release of all remaining political prisoners in Azerbaijan."


Incroci di Civiltà festival management issued a statement, saying it "understood with regret that Azeri author Akram Aylisli has been detained by the airport police at the Baku airport, wishes that the situation may resolve in a positive way and that the author may intervene at the International Festival, which has always promoted freedom of expression and dialogue between cultures."


In an interview with Index on Censorship published this week, Aylisli said he was still facing persecution in his home country. "The dreadful sanctions employed against me and my family remain in force. Officials whom I have known for years are still frightened to say hello to me," he said. "I am automatically banished from everything under the control of the state. Despite this I am still resisting, because I have thousands of readers in this country and, most of all, we owe them gratitude for bringing me where I am."


Aylisli's new short story, The Polecat, tells of a man in a post-Soviet village that is slowly being abandoned by its young people. The man, Qubus, has seen polecats tortured and killed in the village a few months earlier, and now dreams of polecats coming back to the village to take their revenge.


"In Azerbaijan, a polecat is a rare and mystical animal. What people know of them is mostly hearsay. This metaphor contains a hidden philosophical message. People maul a living creature, without knowing what it is and why exactly they need to destroy it," the writer told Index on Censorship.


The magazine's deputy editor, Vicky Baker, said the story "uses metaphor to tackle ideas of freedom and self-censorship", and "also shows originality, humour and insight into post-Soviet village life".


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"Akram Aylisli is a hugely talented writer, who went from being lauded nationwide to being a pariah of the state," said Baker. "[He] was punished for not following the official narrative of history and for approaching a story from multiple viewpoints, like any good writer should. He has been left with no outlets for his work, which is why we were happy to publish one of his short stories, translated it into English for the first time, and share it with a new audience."


Aylisli was nominated for the Nobel peace prize in 2014 by a host of academics, as the "first Turkic author to write a novel about the Armenian genocide", referring to the Turkic ethnic group spread throughout western Asia, including Turkey.


"Many Turkish writers – such as Nzim Hikmet and Orhan Pamuk – told the truth about the genocide, but Mr Aylisli was the first to express that pain in a literary work which is very personal, deep and hard-won," the academics wrote to the Norwegian Nobel committee at the time.


"The Azerbaijani authorities burn the paper on which this hard truth was printed and try to oppress its author. But strange as it might seem, the artistic truth can be more powerful than the repressive state apparatus, more powerful than military force and mass media."


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