BAKU, Nov 19: Up to 30,000 protesters flooded a square in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku on Saturday demanding regime change and fresh parliamentary elections amid a simmering political crisis and calls for a Ukraine-style peaceful revolution.
“The revolution has already begun in Azerbaijan, but this is a peaceful democratic revolution,” Sardar Jalaloglu, a top opposition leader told the crowd.
Demonstrators, many wearing orange clothing and carrying orange flags to recall images from last year’s “revolution” named after that colour in Ukraine, chanted “Step down!” in calls directed at the former Soviet state’s President Ilham Aliyev.
Two previous opposition rallies in the square saw up to 20,000 people attend but Azerbaijan’s opposition, wary of a government crackdown, has not yet risked asking its supporters to overstay legal rally permits for a sit in protest.
Saturday’s rally dispersed peacefully after its permit expired.
Demonstrators were protesting the results of a Nov 6 vote, slammed as deeply flawed by European observers, in which Aliyev’s Yeni (New) Azerbaijan party took most of the seats in the country’s 125-member parliament.—AFP
