GEORGIA/FILE: Human Rights Watch accuses Azerbaijan in "implementing deliberate and abusive strategy aimed at limiting dissent" and curbing the rights of the country's politically active society

Record ID: 218304

  • Title: GEORGIA/FILE: Human Rights Watch accuses Azerbaijan in "implementing deliberate and abusive strategy aimed at limiting dissent" and curbing the rights of the country's politically active society
  • Date: 2nd September 2013
  • Summary: BAKU AZERBAIJAN (FILE - 2013) (REUTERS) EMBANKMENT ALONG CASPIAN SEA BAY WITH HUGE AZERBAIJANI FLAG RESIDENTIAL AND OFFICE BUILDING IN CENTRAL CAPITAL BAKU
  • Embargoed: 17th September 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Azerbaijan
  • Country: Azerbaijan
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA94TBF3KIWZE4U8VB63R2CHTP
  • Story Text: The Azerbaijani government is engaged in a deliberate, abusive strategy to limit dissent, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Monday (September 2).
    The 100-page report, "Tightening the Screws: Azerbaijan's Crackdown on Civil Society and Dissent," a documented research prepared by senior South Caucasus researcher at Human Rights Watch, Giorgi Gogia, describes the deterioration of the government's record on freedom of expression, assembly, and association in the past 18 months.

    "What Human Rights Watch research shows, Azerbaijani government is engaged in the deliberate abusive strategy of government critics, human right defenders. It is cracking down significantly on freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association," Giorgi Gogia told Reuters.
    Human Rights Watch conducted more than 100 interviews and documented the cases of 39 individuals detained, charged, convicted, or harassed throughout Azerbaijan between February 2012 and August 2013.

    "It is a very comprehensive crackdown and we are not talking about just numbers, we are talking about actual legislative framework, the qualitative changes for the work of the civil society in the country," Gogia said.
    He said that politically active youth became particular targets of the crackdown adding that in March and April 2013, the authorities arrested seven members from the youth movement NIDA, which means "exclamation mark" in Azeri language.

    "Seven members of this ( NIDA) group are behind the bars currently on various trumped-up charges and it is striking that the youngest member of the this group is 18 and the oldest is 28 and they are in prison for various trumped-up charges. When I say the trumped-up charges, we investigated these cases in great details and there were numerous due process violations," Gogia said.
    The researcher also said that all seven were active Facebook and Twitter users who frequently posted criticism about alleged government corruption and human rights abuses.

    "What is also alarming is that journalists who are critical of the authorities are often targeted either by the criminal prosecutions or by smear campaigns. Here the government is adamant claiming that these journalists tare not punished for their journalistic work," Gogia said adding that authorities arrested or imprisoned at least six journalists.
    The report also documented four cases in 2013 in which threats, smear campaigns, and violent attacks were clearly used to try to silence a handful of independent, critical journalists and even a celebrated writer, Akram Aylisli. A pro-government party in Azerbaijan has offered a bounty for his ear saying his novel insulted the nation with his depiction of friendship and violence between Azeris and Armenians in the beginning of the 1990s.
    Gogia said Azeri authorities launched fresh attacks against a well-known investigative journalist, Khadija Ismayilova, whose privacy rights were violated last year when a hidden camera video of sex with her partner was posted on the Internet and the case was not investigated.
    Human Rights Watch talked about numerous irregularities in due process violations which undermined the credibility of the investigations and legal proceedings against the victims, including the two human rights defenders who had worked on assistance to flood victims.
    Officials claim that the activists were involved in an alleged plan to instigate violence at a peaceful protest.
    Gogia said that Azerbaijani government should "end the impunity for violence against journalists, abolish criminal defamation laws, allow peaceful assemblies, and repeal legislative changes establishing harsher penalties for the participants and organizers of unsanctioned, peaceful protests."
    Human Rights Watch called on Azerbaijan's international partners to improve shortcomings in meeting its international commitments in respect for human rights.

    "As a part of the European Union, as a member state of the Council of Europe, as a member state to the United Nations Azerbaijan should be urged to protect those rights, should be urged to release the government critics who are currently detained on spurious charges whether it's a journalist, human rights defender, lawyer or any other government critic," Gogia said.
    Oil-producing Azerbaijan, host to international oil companies including BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil, is squeezed in the Caucasus region between Russia, Iran and Turkey, supplies Caspian oil and gas to Europe and serves as a transit hub for U.S. troops based in Afghanistan.
    Azerbaijan is set to hold its presidential election on October 9, with President Ilham Aliyev running for the third five-year term after the 2009 constitutional amendment, which removed a two-term limit for holding the presidency. Aliyev came to power in 2003, succeeding his father.
  • Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2013. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register