Zhala Bayramova

"I was so worried about my mum. I couldn't get any news, they confiscated all the phones, I couldn't reach my mum. Even though my mum got released later on, we couldn't reach her. Then I talked to my mum and I learned how they were detained. Their car was crashed and they were physically dragged. They beat my mum's head, she had bumbs all over her body and bruises. And they were kept in different rooms and different cars, they didn't see each other. She didn't know what was going on with my dad at all. I was very, very worried. I remember, later on they brought my dad to the Economic Research Centre office in Narimanov, our old house, actually. I knew they were looking for justification. Because before, in 2014, 2015, they had detained my dad a couple of times, but later they would release him. So I could still have hope that they will release him again. But when I heard they were making house search, I knew it was serious. There is kind of a rule that when they do a search, they are going to have a criminal investigation and you can't run away from it. And it was kind of obvious to me that it is too late. I told my brothers, don't expect him, we are not going to see him. When they were taking him out if the ECR office, they actually put a black vail on his face and covered it. I was in a call with a friend, video call. They were trying to get the phone to my dad, so that I can talk to him. When he was detained, a journalist filmed it and on the video, there is a scream by that friend: Zhala is on the phone, Dr. Gubad, what do you want to say? This scream. Every time I watch it, I cry. They covered his face, I was scared they did something bad to his face. But my dad was able to get out of the car and screamed, that he was detained on the orders of Ilham Aliyev."

"My dad has been involved in many money laundering investigations. He was also involved in the UN Coalition against Corruption committee. What they do is they investigate money laundering but they also try to bring the money back to the countries. In the case of Azerbaijan, also the UK has been confiscating money from Azerbaijani elite, but it cannot stay in the UK. Because it does not belong to the UK. And it cannot go to Azerbaijan, because the dictator would embazzle it again. What my dad did was that he opened a foundation for scholarships and students. It took him a few years, because registering a foundation in the UK is quite a difficult process. And he was in talks with UK government to take the money there. It is important to note that these scholarschips could have changed a lot in Azerbaijan. One of the movements that have been cracjed down a lot in Azerbaijan is the youth movement, the young people, student movements as well. All the youth movementzs that people put togetehr have been destroyed by Azerbaijani governement, detained. And the reason is that young peple can change the country and they are extremely important. The only scholarship available to Azerbaijani students is the governemt scholarship and this is only for people who are loyal and part of the Azerbaijani elite. They don´t even need the scholarship. And because the land and water borders are closed \nd young people are more likely to be poor, it makes them very islated. What my dad´s scholarship could have done would be getting them to good universities in Europe, US and UK. You would just send your documents there and you would get your scholarship immediately. Because at the end of the day, this money belongs to the poeple of Azerbaijan and they have the right to use it. And considering how much money has been confiscated by the UK government formAzerbaijani elites, it could have been a significant amount. And this is one of the reasons that led to his detention. Help to young people could have been decisive in Azerbaijan and this is what the government was afraid of."

"I was involved in feminist movement. We were all young people, fighting for women's rights, LGBT rights, against discrimination. I was also organising protests with the feminist movement, I was also assaulted and detained, doing a lot of protests. I was involved, but when I basically started to be part of civil society, only one part of it was left - the feminist movement. Before me, all other movements were cracked down and everybody was detained." - "How does a feminist protest look like in Baku, in Azerbaijan?" - "A little bit different every year. In my year, it was very violent. They crashed my ribs and wounded my knee, it was quite a painful process. We were all detained. It think because it was very, very violent in my year, it brought a lot of chilling effect. People were extremely unhappy about police brutality against young people, it was very well filmed by Azerbaijani independent journalists, it was all over the internet. And I think it also helped the movement, in a sense. Later on, after years, when I was already abroad studying in Lund university, the protests were much more peaceful and the government was not as much assaulting people, nor detaining them. In a sense, sometimes you have to sacrifice something in order to achieve something. It is more peaceful and I think the feminist movement is now the only one to be able to do some kind of protests in Azerbaijan. And this is a kind of achievement. There is also a lot of hope, and this hope can be brought by young people as well."