Crackdown Deepens in Azerbaijan as Schism Hits International Monitors

As a crackdown deepens in Baku, a schism has developed among the international monitoring missions over the government's conduct during Azerbaijan's presidential election and its aftermath. One monitoring group, the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe (IDEE), has released a dissenting opinion, indicating that election violations in Azerbaijan were far more prevalent and egregious than the OSCE's preliminary assessment stated.

The IDEE contributed 188 monitors, or roughly one-third of the total number deployed under the OSCE's mission, to observe the October 15 Azerbaijan presidential vote, which official figures showed Ilham Aliyev winning in a landslide. [For background see the EurasiaNet archive]. The preliminary assessment produced by the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights characterized the election as "generally well administered," while noting a "number of irregularities" that caused the election to fall "short of international standards."

All 188 IDEE monitors joined a dissenting assessment, issued October 18, that suggests the OSCE/ODIHR report downplayed the scope and significance of electoral fraud committed during the election. The IDEE mission included monitors from many formerly Communist states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, including Belarus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Poland and Ukraine.

"The observers from Central Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, from countries which recently won democracy or are struggling towards it, are concerned that if the word