Azerbaijani lawyer awarded at Prague human rights film festival

Prague, March 4 (CTK) - Azerbaijani lawyer Intigam Aliyev was presented with the Homo Homini prize for human rights promotion and defence at the 15th One World festival of films focusing on human rights that started in Prague Monday, offering over a hundred of documentaries.

The topics in focus this year are intolerance, discrimination and racism.

Even though the Czech society is not as diversified as others, Czechs, too, show intolerance on various occasions. For example, they mind a different ethnicity of their neighbours and also other people's different political opinion or alternative style of life, the festival organisers said.

Discrimination and racism, nevertheless, do not intensify in the Czech Republic only. The festival's main section will present 13 films that prove the spreading of xenophobic moods in various regions of the world.

Other festival sections focus on the influence of the media, on health care, undemocratic regimes and life style.

The festival was opened Monday with Bravehearts, a Norwegian documentary that was originally planned to map the preparation of a school election, but during the shooting its protagonists got afflicted by Anders Breivik's terrorist attack.

Film screenings will be accompanied by discussions with film makers and experts. More information is available on www.jedensvet.cz.

Aliyev, the fresh Homo Homini prize holder, has brought over 200 cases to the European Court of Human Rights so far. He has also provided legal aid to activists persecuted for participating in peaceful protests.

"Intigam Aliyev is extraordinarily courageous and consistent in defending those who are unjustly prosecuted in Azerbaijan. By presenting the prize we also want to point to the repressions and violation of democratic mechanisms in the present Azerbaijan," said Marek Svoboda, from the People in Need humanitarian organisation.

A few weeks ago, Aliyev and other opponents of the Azerbaijani regime ended up in prison. He was released after several hours, but he is still faced with up to three years in prison, the festival organisers said.