Voice of America - October 14, 2008
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| Akbar Azad |
Question: Why were you arrested?
Answer: We were arrested during Ramadan. Friends had invited us to their home for an iftar dinner with their families. However, before the gathering even began, security forces stormed the house and arrested us without even allowing us to eat. We were taken to prison while hungry. Now, 34 days have passed since the incident. I myself was detained for 23–24 days in solitary confinement. They accused us of wanting to separate Azerbaijan from Iran. But I firmly state that none of our friends have any such plan or even that kind of thinking. At most, they are merely Azerbaijani activists advocating for basic human rights that we all study and respect. We simply want our children to be educated in their mother tongue and for there to be job opportunities in our region. Currently, wherever you look in Iran, Azerbaijanis are working. This is because they are forced to live as migrants in their own homeland due to a lack of opportunities in their regions. That’s the main issue. But this kind of thinking should not have been a reason for our arrest. After all, we were doing nothing, merely gathering for iftar. Even if something had been discussed, it would have been ordinary conversation. There was no plan or agenda. Yet we were detained, and during imprisonment, many friends developed various illnesses—stomach, heart diseases, and so on.
Question: Who arrested you? Was it the police or intelligence agents? And why did they target the house where you gathered?
Answer: They were employees of the Ministry of Intelligence—agents from ETTELAAT.
Question: How were you released? Were the charges against you dropped, or is the investigation still ongoing?
Answer: The investigation is still ongoing. They accused us of disturbing security. We were released on bail. Initially, specific individuals vouched for us, but later, they demanded property bonds. By “property bonds,” they mean either a sum of money per person or property worth 50 million tomans in Iranian currency. We don’t have that. So, we’ll know more in the coming days. They might arrest us again.
Question: How many of your friends are still in prison?
Answer: Our friends were released in three stages. First, women and children were freed. Then, three other friends were released. In the third stage, I and three others were freed. Currently, five people remain in prison. Among them, engineer Hasan Rashidi is in extremely poor condition. He has heart disease and asthma. Alireza Sarrafi, associated with the recently shut-down Dilmanc journal, is also still in prison. Others include Said Muganli, Hasan Rahimli Bayat, and Mehdi Naeimi. Mehdi is a student and a skilled host at Azerbaijani cultural events. I want to emphasize that all our friends are peaceful, non-violent individuals simply advocating for their rights. There are 30 million Azerbaijani Turks in Iran. Speaking our mother tongue and living within our cultural framework is a fundamental right. This isn’t a recent issue—it has been ongoing for over a century. That’s why our arrest was unjustified. For 100 years, the rights of Iran’s Azerbaijanis have been violated, and this continues to this day.
Question: How were you treated in prison?
Answer: All of us were held in solitary cells of 6–7 square meters. We were each interrogated 10–12 times. I was personally interrogated 11 times and faced various charges. They accused us of endangering security and even referred to events from 10–15 years ago that we couldn’t even remember. We were mostly subjected to psychological pressure. Occasionally, two of our friends were subjected to intense physical pressure. However, there was no beating.
Question: Has it ever happened before in Iran that people gathering for an iftar or a simple social event were arrested? Are there restrictions on gatherings in this country?
Answer: Currently, in Iranian Azerbaijan, all public organizations have been shut down. For a long time, we wished to establish a non-political organization. Around 9–10 months ago, we applied to the Ministry of Culture for permission. We had already decided on the name of the NGO we wanted to create: “Language and Culture House” (abbreviated as DEMO). However, in nine months, we received no response. Apparently, one of our “crimes” was wanting to establish such an organization. I was supposed to be one of its founders, along with Hasan Rashidi, who is still in prison. His family recently visited him in prison, and they said his condition is critical—he cannot even speak. But I reiterate, this has nothing to do with the iftar gathering in Tehran. If they didn’t want us to meet, they could have told us at the door not to gather. There was no need for such an incident.
Link to the original interview in Turkish on the Azerbaijani section of Voice of America:
Əkbər Azad : “Məni günahsız yerə həbs etdilər...”