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Talysh football club KhazarLankaranended the match with Baku Ravanclub in the conclusive round in a 2:2 drawdue toan unfair penalty against the Lankaran players, which caused the indignation of all the football fans.Because of the incident, KhazarLankarancould not hold out in the Azerbaijani Premier League, TalyshInfo news agency informs citing Sport7.az.

According to the information, KhazarLankaran’s head of the public relations department, HuseynJabrailoglu, said that their club does not intend to participate even in the first division.
With regard to the incident, Oxu.az writes that the referee awarded a penalty instead of a free kick in favor of the guests.

“At the end of the match, when Khazarwas winning 2:1, referee RamilDaniev awarded the guests with a penalty, which could not even be called disputable. Ravan’s forward knocked the KhazarLankaran’s defender down,”the article reads.

Ravan’s captain RamazanAbbasovconverted the penalty, and as a result, the match ended in a 2:2 draw. Ravanscored 18 points, and KhazarLankaranonly 15 thus moving to the first division.

It is noted in the article that the Lankaran players tried to call the decision in question for a long time and even left the field for a few minutes; however, the “principled” referee remained intransigent.

TalyshInfo news agency reminds that this is not the first case when referees make unfair and sometimes provocative decisions in the Azerbaijani premier league matches against KhazarLankaran.
The fans of the club note that with regard to the increase of the national self-consciousness among the fans and to the appearance of posters in the Talysh language unfavorable for the republic’s football administration, unfair measures and provocations like this are undertaken against the club in order to “knock it out” from the premier league.

According to news agency’s another report, police officers detained young Talysh activist AzerKazimovand took him to Surakhan department of the Baku police in broad daylight without naming reasons.

According to the activist’s family and friends, the reason of the detention was AzerKazimov’s post on Facebook, in which he reportedthe death of his friendkilled several days ago in the police department of the same district.

According to the article, after the activist had made that fact public, police officers appeared in his house and demanded to delete all the posts from his Facebook page; however, Kazimov refused categorically. Apparently, this arrest was the answer to the Talysh activist’s refusal todelete those posts from his page.

The Talysh are Iranian-speaking indigenous people of the region, who follow Shia Islam. Officially, there are 87 thousand Talysh people in Azerbaijan. The real number of the Talysh population is considerably higher – 400. However, this figure is kept secret for a further assimilation of the nation with the Turks of Azerbaijan.Talysh people name various numbers of the nation in Azerbaijan – up to 1,5 millions of people.

In 1993, colonelAlikramGummatov proclaimed the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic consisting of 7 Azerbaijani regions inhabited by the Talyshes. However, Azerbaijani authorities did not recognize its autonomy, and its leaders were prosecuted: Gummatov was imprisoned and sentenced to death. Later, he was deported from the country under the pressure of the Council of Europe and deprived of citizenship.  In January of 2010, Gummatov sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme leader, Khamenei, in which he requested support from Iran against the Azerbaijani authorities, whotrample the Talysh people’s rights and carry out a policy of assimilation.