Up to one hundred people were detained during a protest in Baku. Those who came to the rally organized by the opposition Popular Front Party demanded freedom of assembly, the release of political prisoners, the opening of Azerbaijan’s land borders and the holding of free elections.
The action was scheduled for 16:00 in front of the building of the Executive Power, an hour before that, the police cordoned off the area around the city administration. Police officers were concentrated on both sides of the pedestrian road in the direction of the city hall. A large number of police cars and two special buses were driven to the Icheri Sheher metro station.
According to Turan.az, from about 15:40 the police began to detain everyone who appeared and spoke to journalists on the site in front of the metro station, including women.
The participants of the action used a new tactic: they appeared at the place of the action one at a time and not at once. Then the protesters began to appear in groups of 4-6 or more people, chanting: “Freedom!”, “Resign!”, “Freedom to political prisoners!” Thanks to this, the time of the action was extended, and the police could not detain everyone at once.
Protesters were detained and dragged into police cars and special buses, but there were not enough police cars and new ones were called. The most active was a group of women who continued to shout anti-government slogans from a police bus, the agency writes.
In total, the protest lasted for an hour.
Despite the dispersal and detentions, the chairman of the “People’s Front” said that the rally was “successful.”
“Despite the fact that up to 100 party activists were detained at their homes, and many protesters were arrested on the roads, without reaching the place of the action, hundreds of party members and other protesters went to the place of the action,” he wrote in Facebook after the rally.
