The police dispersed a youth action in Baku

In the evening of May, 22, about 30 people tried to organize a procession along Primorsky boulevard in Baku. In this way they wished to support arrested youth activists. The action was dispersed by the police, five persons were detained. 

The participants of the procession were holding portraits of Bakhtiyar Gajiev and Jabar Savalan sentenced to imprisonment this month and the young activists waiting for trial arrested for participation in an oppositional meeting on April, 2. 

However, police flying squads who hastily arrived at the boulevard started dispersing the young people. In response they started chanting slogans "Discharge Ilham Aliev!" and "Freedom for the Youth!". Five persons were detained. 

"We were initially planning to organize a mute procession in a flash-mob style carrying portraits of the arrested. But three or four minutes after the beginning of the procession the policemen pounced on us and started taking the portraits away from us and tearing them. Only after that we started chanting slogans", one of the participants of the action said. 

We failed to receive any comments from police press services of the capital or the Ministry of Interior Affairs. 

Rasul Jafarov, human rights activist from the Institute of Freedom and Safety of Journalists (IFSJ), in his turn, reported that three of five detainees were "released for sure" at about midnight. 

"As for the rest two young people, we were told in the police department No 39 of Sabail district that they were also released but these guys are inaccessible on the mobiles. That is why we are not sure they were really released", Jafarov said. 

It should be noted that the action was organized by the Committee for Protection of the Rights of Young Political Prisoners (CPRYPP) constituted on May, 20, by a number of youth organizations and youth branches of political parties.