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Eurasia
July 13, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 23
they say was aimed at creating chaos in the coun- try as a precursor to a violent seizure of power, Vedomosti reported.
However, the authorities have kept a tight lid on reporting of Valiyev’s shooting in a country where the media is under strict supervision. 14 people have been sentenced to short prison sentences of between 10 and 30 days simply for discussing the shooting and a nationwide power blackout that occurred on the same day on social media.
In the past, Baku has often exaggerated accusa- tions of religious terrorism to go after actors that the government deemed inconvenient or that were in conflict with the state on various grounds. A secular state, Azerbaijan is nevertheless social- ly conservative and the majority of its population identify as Shi'a Muslim. Neighbouring Iran has long been accused of sponsoring fundamentalist groups in the country.
Last October, Azerbaijani security officers killed three suspected terrorists and confiscated artisa-
nal explosives during a raid in the capital Baku.
The country has also seen several larger-scale political and anti-corruption protests in the last year. Several took place in the autumn following the "Laundromat" revelations initially in The Guardian that the government allegedly used as much as $2.9bn channelled into a slush fund to bribe influential foreign individuals and finance luxury purchases for the elite. Thousands of Azerbaijanis also came out onto the streets
to protest President Ilham Aliyev’s latest landslide re-election in April, saying it was rigged.
The authorities are said to be nervous, espe- cially in the context of Armenia’s Velvet Revolu- tion where mass demonstrations overthrew the government and installed Nikol Pashinian as
the “people’s prime minister” in May. Since then Giorgi Kvirikashvili, the prime minister of Georgia was also forced to resign after he was unable to quell two weeks of street protests in June.
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