By Ellen Barry, The New York Times
MOSCOW — Authorities in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, bulldozed the offices of Leyla Yunus, an activist who has long campaigned against forced evictions in the city, hours after a report on her efforts was published in The New York Times.
According to Azat Isazade, a psychologist who was working in the building on Thursday night, a bulldozer approached the building around 7 p.m. and city officials ordered him to leave. He asked for time to remove furniture, computers, documents and artwork from the building, but an official from the mayor’s office refused and he was unable to save anything, Mr. Isazade said.
The structure was in an area that is being cleared to make way for a park to honor a former president, Heydar Aliyev, the father of the current president, Ilham Aliyev, and rows of new apartment buildings.
Ms. Yunus, who is in Norway on vacation, estimated the building’s market value at $625,000. She said that while she did not receive an eviction notice, others on the street had.
The European Union delegation in Baku released a statement on Friday saying it “deplores” the damage to Ms. Yunus’s organization, “a regular partner of the international community.”
Baku is in the middle of a building boom, fueled by income from oil and gas. Hundreds of homeowners have been pressured to move to make way for downtown redevelopment, with offers of compensation amounting to less than half the market price, Human Rights Watch wrote in a report this summer. Some demolitions have begun while holdouts remained in their apartments, according to the report.
The most vociferous critic of the policy was Ms. Yunus, 55, the president of the Institute of Peace and Democracy, a well-known human rights organization. She organized small protests and at one point emblazoned her building, which also houses a women’s crisis center and an anti-landmine group, with the words, “This is private property and the destruction of the house violates the Constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights.” (City workers arrived early one morning to paint over the message; Ms. Yunus repainted it, and this was repeated four more times in June and July, she said.)
Officials in the city government and at the president’s office said they could not comment on the demolition. Khadi Musa Redzhabli, who heads the Parliament’s committee on social policy, said that he did not know the details of the demolition, but that he was certain it had no connection to Ms. Yunus’s activism.
“The city is growing and dilapidated old buildings are being taken down. It’s not worth looking for a hidden political meaning in this,” Mr. Redzhabli said. “She does not pose a big threat to our government, to our state. I am not sure that her building was destroyed. But if it was, it was done on a legal government basis. ”
In February, Ms. Yunus filed suit against the city, and received an injunction in May from a local economic court halting any demolition work while the case was proceeding.
“I was sure they would not touch me,” she said. “I was sure of this for many reasons. It is a very ugly violation of the law.”
Amanda Erickson contributed reporting from New York.