Azerbaijani regulators have remained motionless over the apparent death of a trans female near Baku, failing to verify if an investigation into her dying was afoot.
According to nearby gay rights activist Alex Shah, the girl, identified only as ‘Aytan’, was found later on 12 March in Khojasan, on the fringes of Baku.
A photograph shared among the native trans children’s area seen by OC Media showed her brain beaten lying on the side of the road.
‘The picture of Aytan’s physique was tragic and you can easily notice the marks of abuse’, Shah told OC Media.
He said that after writing about the killing on social media and tagging the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he was called in for questioning by authorities. He said an analyst informed him they would need more details before they could open an investigation.
‘He told me I should add information about where the criminal case happened and who she was, and I should tell them Aytan’s “real name” (as written) on their identity card’, he said.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Anar Gafarov, told OC Media on Tuesday that the government had no information about the situation, asking if facts about it had been ‘shared on Facebook?’ He insisted the government investigated all death cases.
A spokeswoman for the General Prosecutor’s Office, Aysel Hasanova, did not return our calls.
Shah told OC Media on Thursday that he had received data that two defendants, Aytan’s companion and tenant, had now been arrested.
‘A man from the LGBTIQ+ group told us that Aytan was killed by her lover’, he said. ‘Aytan screamed, and the neighborhood heard her voice, so they called the employer. The landlord took Aytan’s system to the side of the Khojasan street and dumped the body it’, he said.
‘Fearful silence’
Local gay rights activists have also noted the lack of press coverage of the obvious shooting, despite information having been shared online.
‘The internet is mainly keeping silent, and we call it terrified silence’, Leyla Hasanova from QueeRadar told OC Media.
According to Hasanova, keeping silent means that one is not doing something, at the same time, it means not doing something (disregard, keeping silent, not giving support, etc.).
‘Or maybe press shop publishes materials which target the LGBTIQ+’, she said. ‘Knowledge of the area from journalists breaks the respect of the LGBTIQ+ area, too.’
According to Hasanova, another concern on this topic is the non-ability of editors.
Hasanova cited QueerRadar’s 2021 and 2022 press tracking information, which analysed the voice of articles about gay people published in Azerbaijani advertising.
‘For instance, in 2021, we collected 501 news stories from 23 media outlets and 62.5% of these news stories were biased against LGBTIQ+ persons, and this percentage increased in 2022 to 77.1%.’
Trans advocate and actor Vusala Hajiyeva told OC Media that the gay society and media were at odds because the media in Azerbaijan cover just bad news about gay people.
‘Sometimes the media covers the news forgetting about the ethical considerations’, she said. ‘For example, many times, the media used the “dead names” to document the names of someone who is now a transgender woman.’
The situation can be changed promptly if the media takes this issue seriously’, she added.
(Read on OC Media: The rise of homophobic hate speech in Azerbaijan)
