“Based on the complaints, appropriate measures were taken by the police authorities of Baku against on September 15-30. As a result of the measures, from hundreds of sexual minority representatives gathering in various parts of the capital only 83 of them were detained for violation of public order, offenses to public morality and willful insubordination to legal requirements of police officers who were executing their duties of public order maintenance in those districts,” the minister said. “Taking into account that courts established the guilty of the offenders, 56 of them were placed in administrative detention for a period from 5 to 30 days under Article 510 of the Code of Administrative Offences (disorderly conduct) and 535.1 (willful insubordination to legal requirements of police officers), 18 others were fined and 9 received notices.”
Usubov noted in his letter that dangerous infections have been detected in sexual minorities.
“According to results of the conducted medical and laboratory examinations, variously sexually transmitted diseases were revealed in 32 persons, including AIDS (6 persons), HIV (6 persons), syphilis (16 persons),” said the interior minister. “In light of this, for the purpose of treatment of these persons according to principles of humanity and taking into account the sufficient detention period for correctional rehabilitation of other 24 persons with no diseases revealed, they were released early by courts on October 2.”
As regards with the issue of violation of rights of sexual minority representatives, Minister Usubov emphasized that there is no cause to file such claims.
He added that rights of all groups of population in Azerbaijan are protected without any restriction and situation with sexual minorities in our country is no different from the situation in most European states.
“However, there have recently been increasingly frequent attempts of sexual minority representatives to insulate themselves from liability for any wrongful acts committed in our country by bringing to the forefront their sexual orientation. And such cases are settled in Azerbaijan only within the guidelines of the law which passed legal expert review in the relevant international organizations. That is to say that belonging to sexual minority may not exempt from liability and the principle of inevitability of punishment for a committed offense is applied in all cases based on the constitutional provision about equality of every person before the law and courts,” the minister said.
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