Leyla Yunus

* 1955

  • "As I told you, I approached Patrick Hickey, who was the chairman of the Organising Council of the first European Games in Europe. I asked him: 'Where are you going to hold them? In Azerbaijan? It's against the rules and laws of the Olympic Games.' When we investigated it later, it turned out that Patrick Hickey was corrupt. The Europeans can be bought with one or two. In 2017 there was an investigation into 'caviar diplomacy' which revealed how corrupt European political leaders were and how Ilham Aliyev was buying them off. It was in 2017 and I was one of the witnesses, the commission was set up in the Council of Europe."

  • "What I tried to explain here at Forum 2000, and what I keep trying to explain everywhere (Europeans don't get it), is that here you see what happens when you don't react to events. You have the example of Russia and Ukraine. They took Crimea - did anyone tell Putin that this was wrong? Donetsk, Luhansk - has anyone said anything? No. So Putin started a war in Ukraine. They take a city, they lock up some prisoners, political prisoners - does anybody react? No, nobody reacts to anything. The dictatorship in Azerbaijan is also growing as a result. Ilham Aliyev is not only a dictator, he has become a violent one. Previously, he was just putting people in jail. Now he tortures them so brutally that in 2017 several dozen people died as a result of torture. Now they are torturing and killing, they are still torturing and killing. And they give people huge sentences. This is what Ilham Aliyev is doing."

  • "Gorbachev? Of course, there was great hatred at that moment when he allowed the events of January 20 to happen. Do you know how much blood there was? I was at home and they were shooting so that our upstairs windows were riddled with bullets, I hid my daughter and mother under the sofa. My husband went to the street and then ran home. Because many foreign correspondents were calling us, we had to give information, so my husband ran outside to gather information. I remember well that a few days after these events, a man suddenly came to us and introduced himself as a KGB officer. I told him to come in if he wanted to talk. Suddenly the bell rings and eight people come in - journalists from England and Germany. He understood everything and left."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 03.09.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:46:47
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memory and Conscience of Nations
  • 2

    Praha, 03.09.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:46:47
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memory and Conscience of Nations
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I want justice, so I must fight

Leyla as a candidate for the Social Democratic Party to the Parliament of Azerbaijan, September 1990
Leyla as a candidate for the Social Democratic Party to the Parliament of Azerbaijan, September 1990
zdroj: Pamětnice

Leyla Islam kizi Yunus was born on December 21, 1955 in Baku, then the Azerbaijan SSR. Her grandfather Teymur Useynov was the director of the Azerbaijanfilm film studio. She graduated from the Department of History at Baku State University in 1978. In 1978 she married Arif Yunus. She did her postgraduate studies in Moscow, where she joined the underground movement „National Minorities Against the Bolshevik Regime“. She was one of the founders of the People‘s Front of Azerbaijan in 1988. She left the party with her husband when President Aliyev‘s supporters infiltrated there. She covered the events of Armenian and Azerbaijani pogroms in the foreign press, and also the events of „Black January“ - the invasion of Soviet troops into Azerbaijan on 20 January 1990. She created an Armenian-Azerbaijani website, led discussions between Armenians and Azerbaijanis to resolve national issues. In 1994, she founded the Institute for Peace and Democracy, engaged in human rights activities, created complete lists of political prisoners and fought for their release. In 2014, she wrote an appeal to the Council of Europe against the European Games in Azerbaijan for lack of respect to human rights in the country. In August 2014, she was arrested and accused of spying for Armenia. The court sentenced her to 8.5 years in prison for alleged „economic crimes“. In 2015, the Red Cross and an independent doctor from Germany, Christian Witt, were allowed to visit her. In December 2015, under world pressure, her sentence was changed to probation for health reasons. In 2016 she and her husband were granted political asylum in the Netherlands, where their daughter Dinara was already living. In the Netherlands, Leyla continues the activities of the Institute for Peace and Democracy: she makes reports at the Council of Europe, speaks at democratic forums, where she exposes European politicians corrupted by Azerbaijan and the totalitarian regime of President Ilham Aliyev. She also fights for the release of political prisoners of Azerbaijan. She visited Prague in August-September 2022 at the invitation of the Forum 2000 Foundation, which we are grateful to for arranging the interview.