Authorities evict opposition media, party from offices in Azerbaijan's capital

About 100 police surrounded the building housing the editorial offices of Azadliq, the largest opposition newspaper, and the Popular Front, a main opposition party, while law enforcement officers removed the organizations' property and carted it away in trucks.

Azadliq, which leases the building in central Baku, had been warned it would have to leave its offices along with the other tenants after a government property committee demanded thousands of dollars (euros) in back rent, and the ex-Soviet republic's Economic Court issued an eviction order Friday.

"There is no doubt that a deliberate, targeted policy is being carried out with the aim of ensuring that everyone thinks identically - and that if somebody does not, that he stays silent," the head of the Union of Journalists of Azerbaijan, Elchin Shykhlinsky, told The Associated Press.

Opposition parties and independent media outlets have suffered frequent harassment in the oil-rich Caspian Sea state, ruled for years by members of the same family - first by former Communist boss Heydar Aliyev and now by his son, Ilham, who was elected in a 2003 vote denounced by the opposition.

Police surrounding the building did not let people in and kept journalists and foreign diplomats, whose countries have expressed concern about freedoms in Azerbaijan, at least 100 meters (yards) away.

Furniture and equipment was being taken to a buildings far from central Baku where the government says the evicted organizations must relocate. Other organizations being evicted included the opposition newspaper Bizim yol and the Turan news agency.

Popular Front deputy leader Fuad Mustafayev said the authorities had broken some of the property in the offices and that the new locations were not in adequate condition for working. He said the party would fight for its rights "through all permissible methods of political struggle."

Azadliq editor Ganimat Zahidov has been on a hunger strike since Nov. 9, and was hospitalized Friday after his health worsened, Mustafayev said Friday.

Friday's court order came the same day that Azerbaijan's first independent TV station, ANS television, was pulled from the air by the government. Authorities said the station - two days away from celebrating its 15th anniversary with a gala concert - had not extended its license.

The U.S. Embassy called the decision not to renew the license of ANS a "severe blow to media freedom" that "calls into question the Azerbaijani government's commitment to democratic development and the freedom of speech."

"Democracy depends on a vibrant public discourse based on freedom of expression and a diversity of views," the Embassy said in a statement Friday, urging the government to reconsider.

The United States has pursued close ties with Azerbaijan since the 1991 Soviet collapse, backing a pipeline to carry Caspian Sea oil from the shoreline nation westward and lessen reliance on Russian routes, but has expressed concerned about its democracy and free speech. The Associated Press

/The International Herald Tribune/