Human Rights Watch slams Azeri govt’s crackdown on media, NGOs

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Azerbaijani government’s unrelenting crackdown is decimating the country’s once vibrant community of independent nongovernmental organizations and media, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday, January 27 in its World Report 2016.

Courts have sentenced leading human rights defenders and other government critics to long prison terms in politically motivated, unfair trials. Dozens more face harassment and prosecution, and the authorities have denied entry to international human rights monitors and journalists. The crackdown escalated in 2015 and continued as Baku hosted the first European Games in June. Azerbaijan’s international partners struggled to find a unified response to the crackdown.

“The government’s crackdown in Azerbaijan is unprecedented in the country’s post-Soviet history,” said Giorgi Gogia, South Caucasus director at Human Rights Watch. “Although the government is opening the country for international sporting and other events, it’s closing the country to human rights scrutiny.”

Among those handed prison sentences ranging from six to eight-and-a-half years are the human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev, the veteran human rights defenders Leyla and Arif Yunus, the prominent investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, and the human rights campaigner Rasul Jafarov. Others imprisoned on politically motivated charges include the Azadlig columnist Seymur Haziyev, and opposition party activists Siraj and Faraj Kerimlis, and Murad Adilov. Taleh Khasmammadov, a human rights activist, was sentenced to three years.

In December, an appeal court released the Yunuses on five years probation because of their serious health ailments.

In addition to banning several international monitors and journalists from entering the country during 2015, the government forced the closure of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE)’s Baku office. The OSCE for the first time refused to send an observation mission to Azerbaijan’s parliamentary elections, citing the restrictions on the mission.

Several Council of Europe institutions spoke out strongly about the crackdown, but failed for the most part to impose any consequences. Finally in December, the Council of Europe’s secretary general, Thorbjørn Jagland, announced an inquiry into Azerbaijan’s implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights. He said it was triggered by European Court of Human Rights findings on “an arbitrary application of the law in Azerbaijan, notably in order to silence critical voices and limit freedom of speech.”