Azerbaijan Expels Russian Journalist

[Aratta-Kingdom]

AZERBAIJAN EXPELS RUSSIAN JOURNALIST

 

ARMENPRESS

Aug 13 2007

 

BAKU, AUGUST 13, ARMENPRESS: Azerbaijani authorities have expelled a

Russian journalist working for Russian Rosbalt news agency. Russian

Interfax news agency quoted Azeri officials as saying that Yana

Amelina's expulsion, however, was not 'official."

 

Interfax said its sources refused to divulge, saying only that Yana

Amelina had spent 6 days in Azerbaijan, was arrested in the southern

Lenkoran and was flown to Baku.

 

"Before arriving in Azerbaijan the Russian journalist was in Armenia

and visisted the occupied and Armenian-controlled Azerbaijani regions,"

Interfax's source said.

 

In Lenkoran the Russian journalist was supposed to study the problems

of the local Talysh people, who make the majority of population

in Azerbaijan's southeastern parts. This, according to Interfax,

prompted officials in Baku to conclude that the Russian journalist

has an 'anti-Azerbaijani" stance.

 

Talysh people represent the indigenous Iranian population of

Azerbaijan that distinguishes itself from the majority of inhabitants

of Azerbaijan who say they are of Turkic origin. The Talysh are

concentrated in the southeast of Azerbaijan near the border with Iran.

 

Because of the discriminative policy of Baku the majority of them

either have lost national consciousness, or are afraid to recognize

themselves openly as Talysh.

 

In the summer of 1993, amid a political destabilization, leaders of

Talysh national movement declared the establishment of the Talysh

Republic, but it existed for only two months and was suppressed by

Azeri power and security structures.

 

Ex-president of Talysh Republic Alikram Gummatov is still in

prison. Majority of the other national leaders, who managed to

flee, settled down in Russia, because the Talysh movement was

Russian-oriented from the beginning of the last century. However,

receiving no support from Moscow in 1993, a number of activists of

Talysh movement have changed their orientation towards Iran.