Police broke up a banned anti-government rally in Azerbaijan Saturday, arresting and beating dozens of protestors as part of a crackdown on the opposition linked to the opening of a major US-backed oil pipeline.
For hours, the streets of Baku became a tangle of protesters and baton-wielding riot police amid the traffic.
No figure was available for the number of injured, but a reporter saw police flogging several protestors with rubber batons, knocking at least one man unconscious and beating a reporter for the daily Zerkalo newspaper.
PHOTO: AP
A senior police officer at the scene, Kamal Velishov, denied that police had used force, "I have seen nothing of the sort," he told reporters.
Estimates varied for the number of protestors attending the banned rally. Police said 500, and Ali Kerimli, the leader of the opposition Popular Front of Azerbaijan party, said "thousands."
Kerimli, whose party took part in the rally along with two other opposition parties and members of the Yokh youth movement -- which is modeled on movements that helped topple the regimes in Georgia and Ukraine -- said 300 people were arrested. According to official data, only 45 were arrested.
Authorities refused to allow the rally on the grounds that it fell too close to the opening ceremony for the US$4-billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC), which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due to attend on Wednesday.
The rally was preceded by a crackdown on the opposition in which 30 people were arrested over the past few days.
The opposition alleged the arrests were an attempt to derail the protest rally, which it called to demand a fair vote in parliamentary elections in November.
Hundreds were arrested and one man died in protests over contested presidential elections in 2003 in which Ilham Aliyev replaced his ailing father Heydar Aliyev in the former Soviet Union's first dynastic succession of leaders.
The US embassy in Baku said on Friday it was concerned by the government crackdown because it cast doubt on the legitimacy of the parliamentary elections.
The embassy joined the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in calling for the restoration of the right of free assembly in Azerbaijan.
Norway's ambassador to Azerbaijan, Steinar Gil, attended the rally and said the reaction of the authorities to the protest discredited Aliyev.
"I saw harsh violence at the hands of the police, I saw a bloodied man; these people are not a threat," he said of the protestors.
"Azerbaijan had the chance to show that it was a normal country with democratic principles," Gil said. He also said it would be an embarrassment if opposition figures remained in detention when a host of foreign dignitaries attended the pipeline's opening.
Azerbaijan's prosecutor general, Zakir Garalov, earlier defended the crackdown.
"Those who think they can violate public order on the eve of the celebration are mistaken," he said. "The state's interests are above those of political functionaries," he added,referring to opposition figures.
The BTC pipeline, which will ship Caspian oil to the Mediterranean, was built with financial support from the US. The British oil company BP holds a 30-percent stake in the consortium running the pipeline. Other consortium members include Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR, Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Inpex, Itochu, Statoil, TPAO and Unocal.
Tensions between authorities and opposition were approaching boiling point ahead of the November vote, which the Council of Europe described as a crossroads where "we may become witnesses either to fair and free elections or a bloody confrontation between thousands."
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