The flame from Tei / 2013
The video was inspired by a text that belongs to Mr. Horia Garbea, vice-president of the Romanian Cultural Institute and president of the Bucharest's Writers Association at the moment of publishing.
Garbea received on May 7th, 2013, in Baku, the Heydar Aliyev award, offered by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, for writing an essay celebrating the 90th birthday of Azerbaijan's former president. The title of Garbea's essay was „Heydar Aliyev – the man, the flame". The prize was given to 6 writers, after having been chosen from 450 competitors.
Heiydar Aliyev was the classical dictator.
Already a Major-General, he became director of Azerbaijan's KGB in 1967.
He started ruling in 1969, when Leonid Brezhnev appointed him as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party.
In 1982, Yuri Andropov made him First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. In 1987, he was forced to resign, after Mikhail Gorbachev accused him of corruption, but continued to have a huge influence over Azerbaijan. In 1993 he became president, position which he retained until his death, in 2003.
The Aliyev family has a wealth that can not be justified and is hard to even calculate, in a country that fought poverty until recent years. With a tremendous number of offshore accounts and with a lot of the country's oil coming their way, the Aliyevs represent a true democracy.
Freedom of speech in Azerbaijan is truly respected by the Aliyev family.
Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade, activists and bloggers, served 17 months in jail (after being attacked and beaten), from 2009 to 2010.
The reason was that they posted a satirical video on YouTube.com, in which they staged a conference with a man wearing a donkey suit, mocking the $82.000 spent by the president in order to buy two donkeys from Germany.