Gay couple in Azerbaijan forced to flee after engagement vow makes local news

A gay couple in Azerbaijan have received death threats and been forced to go underground after getting engaged in a small ceremony.

Javid Nabiyev and his partner exchanged vows in presence of a handful of friends earlier this week in Sumqayit on the Caspian sea, a year after they first met.

But when several news networks in Azerbaijan picked up their private pictures on Facebook, they were inundated with hate mail from people who said they deserved to die.

“We received homophobic verbal attacks,” said Nabiyev, who is the head of the Azerbaijani gay rights advocacy group, Nafas Azerbaijan LGBT alliance. “Some people said ‘You should die, I’ll kick you in the street, I’ll kill you’,” he told the Guardian on phone from Baku.

The 25-year-old said he had had to leave home because people had gathered outside and shouted homophobic abuse.

“We were engaged; not in a big ceremony. It took place between our friends at my home and only eight people were invited,” he said.

“At midnight yesterday, I had to change the place I was living in. People in my apartment building had heard about the news and I heard people gathering outside my house and ridiculing us,” he said. “It was very terrible. But I’m now in a safe place in a friend’s house.”

Homosexuality is legal in Azerbaijan, but Nabiyev said discrimination against the gay and lesbian community and homophobia was rife.

“After the news agencies published articles on the basis of my private Facebook posting, people showed very homophobic reaction,” he said.

Nabiyev’s 19-year-old partner, whose identity is withheld to protect his safety, particularly, is facing a dilemma at home. His father threatened to send him to the army instead of university after hearing the news.

“I don’t know what has happened to my partner. He is with his parents now,” Nabiyev said. “He sent me a brief message that his dad wants to send him to the army. His parents have also confiscated all our documents, which we would need to produce a passport if we were ever to leave the country.”

Nabiyev said that his partner’s mother had thrown gasoline on him and tried to set him on fire last month, but the attack did not succeed.

Despite rising homophobic attacks, Nabiyev said the police does not listen to their demands for safety.

Nabiyev’s organisation have tried to lobby members of the parliament to raise the LGBT issues with Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, but they haven’t gone too far.

“Our government is also homophobic,” the campaigner said. “We created a campaign to raise LGBT issues with the president and one MP asked him about the situation of LGBTs in Azerbaijan, but he didn’t mention the LGBT community at all in his answer.”

The 2012 Eurovision song contest, which took place in Baku, drew a great deal of attention towards human rights abuses, including those concerning the LGBT community, in Azerbaijan. The former Soviet republic has a notorious track record on human rights and freedom of expression.