MARCH 1 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Around 1,000 people rioted in Quba, a town of 40,000 people in the north of Azerbaijan, burning down the house of the regional governor in the worst street violence since President Ilham Aliyev came to power in 2003.
Police in full riot gear resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets to restore order.
The trigger for the violence was a video of the governor chastising the people of Quba for selling their property. The day after the riot, the central government sacked him.
This protest was different from anti-government demonstrations in the past year in Baku. Most of those had been organised on Facebook and the internet by an emerging middle class. The authorities had been ready for them and snuffed them out before they could gather momentum.
There have also been protests by radical religious Azerbaijanis demonstrating against the government’s secular policies. Again these had been pre-arranged and easily dealt with.
In Quba, though, the protest had been spontaneous, non-religious, non-political and violent. All it took was a thoughtless remark by a governor to set alight seething frustration, showing just how fragile the authorities’ control is.
At least in Quba the authorities reached for tear gas and rubber bullets rather than the live rounds that their counterparts in western Kazakhstan used to quell a riot in December.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 080, published on March 8 2012)