Azerbaijanis in Tbilisi Create New Group to Counter Attacks on Their Co-Nationals Abroad

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 24 – Three Azerbaijani political emigres in the Republic of Georgia have created a Committee for the Defense of Victims of Trans-Border Persecution and Repression to defend other Azerbaijani emigres whose extradition Baku is seeking or who have been threatened or even attacked with physical retribution.

            The new group is headed by Avtadil Mamedli, an Azerbaijani political émigré in Georgia, and is part of the Tbilisi Institute for the Defense of Rights and Freedoms. It promises to provide assistance to any Azerbaijani abroad who is threatened with extradition or attack and to publish regular reports on what is going on (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/378513/).

            The creation of this group calls attention to an ugly phenomenon most commonly associated with Ramzan Kadyrov’s attacks on Chechens political emigres (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/kadyrov-with-moscows-help-increasingly.html) but now affecting other emigrations from the former Soviet space as well.

            As the numbers of such diasporas increase and as some of the regimes in the region seek to silence their opponents, monitoring of the kind the new Tbilisi group promises is especially important as a means to increasing awareness of such crimes in the West and reducing the willingness of Western governments to extradite people back to this region.