To give some short-term background: The Azeri government has, in the past few weeks, really cracked down on opposition leaders and arrested hundreds of people. With this rally, as with all, the opposition applied for approval to hold their rally but they were denied. But instead of staying home, they came out into the streets as planned, and boy, did they come out.

BAKU, June 4 (AFP) – Some 10,000 anti-government protestors rallied in the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan calling for regime change in the former Soviet republic on Saturday.

In the first opposition rally not to have been crushed by police since 2003 presidential polls ended in violence, protestors carried signs with the phrase “we want freedom” superimposed onto portraits of US president George W.
Bush.

Police officials, who mobilized hundreds of riot police to encircle the rally, told state-owned media that less than 3,000 people attended the protest, but an AFP correspondent estimated the turnout at 10,000.

In a flashback to the peaceful revolt that ousted an entrenched regime in Ukraine last year, members of the Yeni Fikir youth movement wore orange shirts and headbands and directed shouts of “step down” at the country’s leadership.

“We want a normal government, we want this regime to give up power,” said Ruslan Bashirli, the leader of Yeni Fikir, one of the youth protest groups that have mushroomed in Azerbaijan ahead of a parliamentary election scheduled
for November.

Bashirli said the group would push for a “peaceful, velvet revolution” during the elections.

The entities that pressured the Azeri government after cracking down on last month’s protests, if I remember correctly, were the U.S., the EU, and the OSCE. The crackdown had come just before the opening of the pipeline, in which many foreign diplomats were present. It can’t be a coincidence that over 10,000 people were able to organize this time without any police violence.