Yes, the regime has again crossed the red lines in Imishli. On January 18, 2025, the people of Imishli rose up against the police system. It all started on the 18th of January when a police car hit 4 schoolchildren, killing 2 of them. The police we hate, and their grip on violence have once again crossed all our boundaries, our bodies, and our souls.
The aliyev regime’s police state has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not value its people, from the youngest child to the oldest. By silencing the population, keeping them economically dependent and in a precarious situation, it perpetuates a system of surveillance and violence that permeates every corner of our lives. These reminders of indifference ignite our anger again and again, but even when the most basic red lines are crossed, we are expected to remain silent.
This silence cannot continue. The essence of the police state is not limited to the physical violence and control of the police on the streets and in police stations, but extends to the violence and control of our minds and thoughts. The strategy of this regime is familiar to all of us. It individualizes tragedies like Imishli to distract from systemic issues while punishing those who dare to resist. It labels protesters as “hooligans” and arrests them to instill fear, creating a stifling atmosphere in which anger is suppressed before it can turn into collective action.
We have seen this tactic before, with the silencing and police brutality of elderly women participating in the protests in Soyudlu. We have also seen it in the police brutality towards people who were attacked in their homes, humiliated and taken out in their underwear, and arrested in the early days of the COVID pandemic. We have witnessed this police hooliganism and violence in countless other protests. And how many police stations are hidden, where violence continues to occur.
Most importantly, we all know that the regime uses its media puppets to manipulate narratives and to appease the public under the guise of "foreign enemies, interference, threats." All of these tactics are calculated moves to keep their system, which thrives on oppression, injustice, and fear, afloat.
In fact, the first enemy of this people is precisely the aliyev government, its police institution that keeps this government, this violent regime legitimate! The enemy is within us. Our own regions and villages, which are seeking their rights and raising their voices, are being subjected to occupation by this regime! We have seen this in Soyudlu and Nardaran, which have been kept under military and police siege and whose entrance is under total surveillance, and now we see it in the Imishli!
But enough is enough!
The deaths of children in Imishli are not an accident, but the consequences of a regime that arms its police forces against the people. Every arrest, every silence, every violence is a barrage of evidence of the state’s unlimited power and the human life it devalues.
So we must not allow our anger to be extinguished by fear or controlled by lies. Let us be angry! Let us channel our grief, our anger, and our despair into a united, radical resistance to the police regime. Let us not forget that the regime’s power lies in our silence and obedience, and the moment we refuse to obey, the foundation begins to crack.
And let us not forget that the police always serve the repressive regime, not the people!
The police system is the foundation of the violent regime in Azerbaijan. The hatred shared by everyone - except for the privileged - against the police is actually the embodiment of hatred for this regime itself. All the apparatuses of the regime in every part of the country, from the smallest enterprise to the very top, are surrounded by filth, bribery, and injustice. At the forefront of such apparatuses is the police force, whose sole purpose from the beginning has not been to protect the rights, order, and security of the people, but rather has been turning in the power apparatus of the political regime by protecting those with power and wealth, those with connections and acquaintances at the top, and the interests and profits of this government alone and exclusively. With the support and lack of control the police system receives from the regime, they have committed unthinkable acts of violence in many places, destroying the lives of many people, causing tragedies, or leaving them helpless. This police apparatus is the most important and favourite lever of this regime to carry out its fascist policy.
This police apparatus, which does not care about any problem faced by an ordinary citizen, does not lift a finger without a bribe and even lays out claims on a piece of bread in the hands of the impoverished people, appears at the scene with its brutal violence and a thousand and one evil games at the moment of the uprisings and protests of the people who are fed up with all this helplessness and injustice.
The division between "good police" and "bad police" is a false illusion. The police system is essentially nothing more than robbery and legalized murder, criminal grouping, and hooliganism. This herd of police, which has become independent, is the direct perpetrator of how many tragedies and crimes we do not yet know about.
How is police violence justified?
Every police brutality and corruption is rationalized and justified by those who continuously benefit from the existence of the police state - the media - the courts - politicians.
The Azerbaijani puppet media has been playing a thousand games around the incident that has been happening for 2 days. On the one hand, it shares the news in neutral language as if it were an ordinary event: "On January 18, at around 12:30, the district prosecutor's office received information about a fatal traffic accident involving a State Traffic Police vehicle on Abbasgulu Shadlinski Street in Imishli city." On the other hand, they mumble about the police car accidentally hitting children: "Ministry of Interior: As a result of another vehicle driving in front of the police car on its way to work in Imishli, the service car hit children on the side of the road". Not content with describing what happened as an "accident", they blame, insult and fire those who protest. The system clearly demands the complicity of the victims, and in order to deepen their obedience, it increases its violence even more.
The courts are also complicit in this control scheme. The court, which perpetuates classism and uncontrolled police power, does not function as an instrument of justice, but as a means of reinforcing systemic inequality. The courts are engaged in defending this legalized criminality in order to ensure that individual officials and the wider structures they serve are not harmed.
Politicians who are busy protecting their power and property demand more police, more prisons, and more surveillance. They are strengthening the existing repressive system and the aliyev regime at the head of it, in collusion with judges and police who protect their rich and powerful under the guise of “justice.” If aliyev knows and sees everything, then he is responsible for everything. This is the mistake of such centralized regimes that leave no room for anyone but themselves, and in the end, they must be ready to be responsible for everything. From the smallest bureaucrat's mistake to the murder by a policeman.
Regimes that do not respond to any illegal actions of the police have one goal: when there are protests against the regime, the police will not have the idea or opportunity to go over to the people’s side, because since all the violence of the regime is done by the police and they do not suffer any punishment, all the hatred of the people will be directed at the police and there will be no mercy for them. As a result, today, the Azerbaijani police have no function other than protecting the aliyev regime.
Therefore, the people of Imishli protesting with the slogan "Resignation" is the logical conclusion of the events!
So why can't such protests (Imishli, Ismayilli, Ganja, Guba-Gusar, Nardaran, Soyudlu, etc.) grow?
The first reason, of course, is that the authoritarian regime deprives Azerbaijanis of any alternative ideas and thoughts. Anyone who has a different idea to the hegemonic narrative of the regime is silenced and repressed. At the same time, puppets who spread hegemonic nonsense are given space. For example, as the Members of the Parliament, which in Azerbaijani are called Advocates of the People, who in reality turned into the the advocates of the regime. Those who call for everyone who expresses a critical opinion against the state on social networks to be under the control of law enforcement agencies are those who want to establish fascism in Azerbaijan (let's remember that fascism is not hatred against any ethnic group, but the establishment of total control by the state, and calling it a nation-state unity, but in reality exploiting people violently). Of course, the most privileged puppet regime advocates benefit from such a fascist regime. Let us recall that it is the sovereign right of the Azerbaijani people to criticize, question, and even oppose the state, regime, and government. The only ones who have denied this right in history have been fascists, and their end is known to everyone.
Since the political regime in Azerbaijan is not total (although they strive for it), and since it never can be, different ideas arise and spread. Today, there are and will always be people who say, "we don't need a police system, a police state, and the Azerbaijani police are a manifestation of an oppressive regime." Even if Azerbaijanis are not allowed to speak, they feel police violence and a police state in their lives every day. The fact that the people of Imishli took to the streets today, fearlessly demonstrating their anger, is not just the result of an "unfortunate event", but an inevitable manifestation of the injustice and oppression that the aliyev regime has subjected these people to for years. The best example of this is the incident in Imishli when a man shouted at the police, "You didn't give me a break that day at the market."
The second reason is that although Azerbaijanis understand and feel this violence, they do not know how to unite, organize, and show solidarity. This is the most important thing that the aliyev regime has deprived the Azerbaijani people of. We do not know how to fight, because all the physical spaces where we could gather together have been taken away from us. Everyone who can speak within us has been arrested. The aliyev regime has closed all political spaces. People have naturally turned to the slogan "Resignation", which is a familiar slogan from the struggle of the 90s. Of course, the result of this deprivation will be a spontaneous uprising of the people and uncontrollable anger. If not today, then tomorrow.
If Azerbaijanis want to live a life without violence, we must learn to be in solidarity not only for Karabakh but also for each other, for a good life, and not to die. We have nothing more to lose. If people in Imishli stood up today, people in other districts should also demonstrate solidarity by showing that they are united against this police violence and police state and that they do not want to live like this anymore.
So what do the police fear? Crime? No. They fear us, the common people. They fear accountability, the dissolution of their authority, and the liberation of the communities they occupy. They fear justice—the raw, ruthless justice demanded by the people they oppress. Like any occupying army, the police exist not to protect us, but to preserve the power of authority and maintain a system of exploitation. Their fear is not weakness, it is strategy. It is a tool of power used to intimidate and divide us, to keep us obedient.
To be free, we must make no compromises with this mechanism of repression. We must refuse to be subjugated. We must resist their violence. We must expose their crimes. Every policeman is an instrument of the state, and the state is an instrument of domination. We owe them nothing—neither respect nor cooperation nor silence.
Our power lies in our refusal. Refuse the police. Refuse to be controlled. Refuse to be broken. The police, as well as the political regime they protect, are afraid of us - ordinary people - because they know that when we rise, they will fall!
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