Azeris will be obligated to erect a monument for Akram Aylisli: Los Angeles Times

YEREVAN, MAY 20, ARMENPRESS. Los Angeles Times touched upon the issue of persecutions initiated by the Azerbaijani authorities against Azerbaijani author Akram Aylisli after his novel "Stone Dreams" was published. The book is about the Armenian massacres in Baku and Agulis. The newspaper stated that the Azerbaijani author is being persecuted for calling for reconciliation between the two peoples.

As reports "Armenpress" the article by Sergei L. Loiko runs as follows: "His books were burned by a mob in Azerbaijan's second-largest city. His wife and son have lost their jobs. A crowd in a small town demanded that his blood be tested to establish his true ethnicity. The nation's president stripped him of his honorary title as "the People's Writer." And an infuriated mob under his window made threats against his life and told him to leave the country.

Akram Aylisli, 75, says the treatment he has received since publication of the Russian translation of his latest book, "Stone Dreams," defies even his own literary imagination.

The book describes outbreaks of ethnic violence in Azerbaijan, then a Soviet republic, in the waning days of the Soviet Union."

Among other things the columnist stated: "Instead, since the Russian translation of the book was carried in the December issue of the Friendship of Peoples journal — published in Moscow — Aylisli's life has been a living hell.

On Feb. 7, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev issued two decrees stripping the author of the honorary title of the People's Writer, awarded in 1998. He also deprived Aylisli of a monthly stipend of about $1,270.

A Russian literary editor said he doubted that Aliyev and protesting Azerbaijanis had even read the book.

"This book in a most humane way tries to study the nature of such an ugly phenomenon as inter-ethnic hatred and certainly possesses none of the qualities attributed to it in Aliyev's decree," said Leonid Bakhnov, head of the prose department at the Russian journal.

Aylisli said that his son Najaf, a senior customs officer, was pressured into quitting his job on Feb. 4. The next day, the writer's wife, Galina, was forced to leave her longtime position as a library director.

Dozens of residents of Aylisli's hometown, Aylis, the main setting for the book, were shown on television denouncing the author and demanding that his blood be tested. Within days, a mob in the main square of Ganja burned hundreds of volumes of Aylisli's books.

Then in Baku, the head of the pro-presidential Modern Musavat Party confirmed that he had offered the equivalent of $12,700 to anyone who cut off the author's ear. The party "decided that any punishment will be insufficient for Aylisli; that is why it is necessary to cut off his ear," the politician told the Turan news agency.

"I feel like a victim of Stalinist trials, and frankly I am afraid to venture out the door these days," Aylisli said. "They stand outside my window and scream at the top of their throats that I am a traitor and that I must die or leave the country."

Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on the group's website that instead of protecting the author, the Azerbaijani government had "led the effort to intimidate him, putting him at risk with a campaign of vicious smears and hostile rhetoric."

In "Stone Dreams," Aylisli calls on his compatriots to have compassion for Armenians, given the hardship they have suffered over the centuries.

"If a single candle were lighted for every murdered Armenian, the light from these candles would be brighter than that of the moon," says a key character in the novel. "This nation was tired and exhausted from the violence but they never stopped building their churches, writing their books and raising arms to heaven appealing to their God."

"Apparently his call was heard but grossly misinterpreted," editor Bakhnov said. "But nevertheless, one day they will be obligated to erect a monument for him."