Is the goal to kill Bakhtiyar Hajiyev?

Baku/13.02.23/Turan: For the 36th day (since January 9), public activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev has been on a  hunger strike. Due to the deterioration of Hajiyev's health, on the night of February 10, the activist, who was held in the Baku pre-trial detention center, was transferred to a medical institution of the Penitentiary Service. The US State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Saturday: "We are deeply concerned that Azerbaijani activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev has been in prison since December last year, International Human Rights Day, and that he is facing politically motivated charges."

According to an independent doctor, Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, who went on a hunger strike, has seriously deteriorated, and may fall into a coma, Price said.

Rufat Safarov, co-founder of the human rights organization “Line of Defense”, talks about the  health of Bakhtiyar Hajiyev in the program "Difficult Question".

According to him, today the main issue on the agenda of the "Line of Defense" is the issue of Bakhtiyar Hajiyev. “Today is the 36th day of the hunger strike conducted by Bakhtiyar Hajiyev in protest against the illegal arrest. And what is most worrying is that he intends to go all the way and secure his release,” the human rights activist said.

According to Safarov, today it is obvious to everyone that Bakhtiyar Hajiyev is being persecuted on libel, on false charges. "The accusations of hooliganism and contempt of court brought against him are absurd," he said, adding that Hajiyev’s trial "is not so much a political and legal process as a moral and psychological process."

The human rights activist noted that the actions of both the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the government as a whole show that they simply hate Bakhtiyar Hajiyev and, instead of fulfilling his fair demands, further aggravate the conditions of detention, limiting correspondence and telephone communications, obviously hoping in this way to break his will.

"They are seeking an end to the hunger strike in order to be able to make a politically motivated decision," Safarov stressed. The human rights activist also noted that despite the long calls of our and the international community, the authorities do not respond to them.

“We are human rights activists and representatives of civil society, about 60 well-known public activists, representatives of the intelligentsia and the media have repeatedly appealed to the country's leadership and the Ministry of Internal Affairs with requests. The demands at the international level have also increased. The US State Department issued four statements calling for the release of Bakhtiyar Hajiyev. The German Bundestag also demanded Hajiyev's freedom, the EU and European institutions made appeals. But so far, all this has not yielded results,” he says.—0—