HRW: repression in Azerbaijan reached crisis levels

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijan’s longstanding repression of independent voices has reached crisis levels, even as it nears the end of its six-month chairmanship of the Council of Europe. The situation puts to the test the council’s standing as Europe’s foremost human rights body, the Human Rights Watch said.

“The Azerbaijani government’s systematic crackdown on human rights defenders and other perceived government critics shows sheer contempt for its commitments to the Council of Europe,” commented Giorgi Gogia, senior South Caucasus researcher at Human Rights Watch. “To let the relentless repression go unanswered threatens the very credibility of the institution.”

Azerbaijan assumed the six-month rotating chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in May 2014, despite years of suppression of criticism and failure to adhere to the commitments it undertook when joining the organization. But instead of cleaning up its record and addressing longstanding concerns, the government stepped up its crackdown, lashing out at human rights defenders, journalists, and social media activists with spurious criminal charges and convictions, the HRW said.

Over the last two-and-a-half years Azerbaijan has brought or threatened unfounded criminal charges against at least 50 independent and opposition political activists, journalists, bloggers, and human rights defenders. Most of them remain behind bars. In the months since Azerbaijan assumed the chairmanship of the Council of Europe the government has dramatically escalated its attack on activists, with authorities arresting at least 11 people and convicting at least nine others on politically motivated charges, sentencing them to various prison terms following flawed trials, the organization said.

Baku has also used restrictive new laws regulating nongovernmental organizations and other tactics to try to silence independent groups. It has cut off funding by freezing the bank accounts of organizations and their leaders arbitrarily and without recourse and refusing them the authorization to register new grants.

The government has particularly intensified repression against human rights defenders, targeting some of the country’s most prominent activists: Leyla Yunus, the well-known director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, and her husband, the historian Arif Yunus; Rasul Jafarov, chair of Azerbaijan’s Human Rights Club; and Intigam Aliyev, chair of the Legal Education Society. All four are in pretrial detention on spurious charges, ranging from tax evasion to treason.