Letter: cost of opposition

On Nov. 11, 2009, Adnan Hajizadah, an alumnus of the University of Richmond, was given a two-year prison sentence in Baku, Azerbaijan. He was found guilty of hooliganism during a scuffle in which government-sanctioned elements had violently precipitated upon Hajizadah and his friend Emin Milli in a cafe with the clear intention to harm and intimidate opposition movements in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku.

Upon returning to his home country, Hajizadah has led a progressive youth movement that has often been critical of government-mandated policies that menace the human rights of its citizens and promote a status quo despite serious concerns regarding societal issues at large.

Hajizadah's personification of the government in a donkey costume asserting that everything in Azerbaijan is OK, which is readily accessible in videos online, has attracted sufficient attention from the government to incite active suppression of this sort of criticism.

Hajizadah's case is by no means islated when it's considered that Milli, the leader of another youth organization supporting lobbying for greater freedom of the press, has also been given a two-and-a-half-year sentence for falling victim in the same cafe scuffle as Hajizadah. Both Hajizadah and Milli were injured during the government-imposed aggression acted out against them.

As a friend of Hajizadah's, I'm deeply upset to hear the news of his imminent incarceration. I'm further distraught to know that as a Richmond alumnus, Richmond didn't give Hajizadah the support that I have come to expect from other excellent institutions, such as the emphatic support of President Lee C. Bollinger of Columbia University, who implored President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the release of people from the Columbia community incarcerated in Iran.

It is unacceptable for me to comprehend that politically sensitive reasons may inhibit certain high level members of the Richmond International Office to condemn this clear act of manipulation and suppression with violent inhumanity. I hope that in the future, the university considers that a person's rights are more important than political implications that might negatively impact the institution in the future.

The university is, after all, an institution that should enhance and protect the development of people into enlightened beings, even alumni!