In Azerbaijan the inmates on hunger strike demand to meet human rights activists

The hunger strike of the inmates of the Gobustan prison continues. According to the sources close to the inmates' relatives, because of aggravated health condition and on insistence of their comrades Bakhtiyar Dzhafarov and Nariman Agalarov stopped the hunger-strike. B. Dzhavadov had earlier announced a waterless ("dry") hunger strike and sewed up his mouth, after that he was placed into the medical section of the prison. N. Agalarov suffers from a heavy form of tuberculosis. Other inmates (over 35 in number) continue the action of hunger-strike, waiting for their problems to be solved, and for human rights activists and journalists who have expressed their wish to come and conduct monitoring in the prison.

The day before, July 10, a commission comprised of officials of the Ministry of Justice, the Constitutional Court and the Executive Machinery of the President visited the Gobustan prison. They did not meet any inmates but worked with documents in the prison head's study. It is not clear whether the visit was related to the hunger strike or was a part of long promised act of pardon.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice again refuted the information about the hunger strike of inmates at the Gobustan prison. According to Rafik Ramazanov, head of the department of corrective works and social protection, the very fact of the hunger strike in the Gobustan prison has not been confirmed so far. According to his version, the issue of hunger strike in the Gobustan prison is deliberately blown up by certain mass media does not correspond to reality.

In their turn, human rights activists state that the authorities would not let them to visit the Gobustan prison to meet the inmates-participants of the hunger-strike.

We remind you that at present the Gobustan prison keeps 89 persons, for whom the death penalty was replaced by life sentence. In recent years, these inmates have been insisting on replacement of their life terms by fixed ones, since at the moment of their conviction the legislation had no punishment in the form of life imprisonment.