The year of violation of human rights

This day was not chosen by chance. On June 18, in 1998, Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev approved the State Program for the Protection of Human Rights. In December 2011, Ilham Aliyev approved the National Program of Action to Enhance the Effectiveness of Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms in the Republic of Azerbaijan, which was to become a roadmap for measures to protect human rights in the country.

An impressive document, consisting of six sections, was set to sustainability of measures aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the protection of human rights and freedoms, the development of legal culture in society, the improvement of the legal framework and the human rights system.

The program covered the period until 2015, and was not subsequently extended.

The government claims that a lot has been done in this direction. Since the 1990s, Azerbaijan has adopted more than 200 international conventions, of which 70% are directly aimed at protecting human rights. In this direction, the Office of the Ombudsman of the Republic of Azerbaijan was established in Azerbaijan, laws and other legal acts in the field of human rights protection have been established. The State Committee for Family, Women and Children of Azerbaijan.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Elmar Mammadyarov, speaking at the 37th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, acknowledged the existence of separate problems, but made claims to the world community in connection with the violation of the rights of a million refugees, as a result of the occupation of part of the territory of Azerbaijan.

This claim is applied regularly when the talk is about human rights in Azerbaijan. Thus, violation of the rights of persons forced to become refugees through the fault of Armenia is violated with violation of the rights of millions of citizens of the country through the fault of the Azerbaijani authorities. That is, the logic of such a statement of the question is: remove the occupation and ensure the return of refugees, then we will stop violating the rights of our own citizens. This also implies the logical conclusion that the population of the country, including refugees, is a hostage to the policy of suppression of rights and freedoms held by official Baku.

Over the past year and more recently, various local and foreign organizations have reported serious facts of torture, arrests of political and religious activists, and suppression of media freedom.

In 2017, very serious facts of torture, arrests of political and religious activists, and suppression of media freedom continued in Azerbaijan. This is stated in the annual report of the US State Department on the situation with human rights in the world in 2017.

Among the blatant violations are deaths of prisoners, their detention in difficult and life-threatening conditions, arbitrary arrests, lack of freedoms, political prisoners, physical threats to journalists, interference with privacy, and restrictions on freedom of expression.

At least six cases of torture and physical violence have been reported leading to death. In particular, on April 28, 2017, the blogger Mehman Galandarov died in suspicious circumstances in the Kurdakhany detention center. He was hurriedly and secretly buried. The results of the investigation into the prisoner"s death were not reported to the public.

Also reported are cases of violent death and also a burial of five soldiers accused of espionage. Families were not given the opportunity to inspect the bodies.

As for the torture of prisoners, the police did that against the convicted blogger Mehman Huseynov.

The activists of the movement Muslim Unity Abbas Huseynov and Jabbar Jabbarov also complained about torture in the Gobustan prison. There were threats and pressures on LGBT activists detained in Baku in September.

As a result of not providing medical assistance, the condition of the deputy chairman of the Popular Front Party Gezal Bayramli in jail worsened.

It also indicates the limitation of citizens' access to legal protection due to the restriction of their representation in courts only by members of the Bar association.

The opposition politician Ilgar Mammadov remains in prison despite the decision of the European Court of Human Rights of 2014 on his illegal arrest.

It is also pointed out that after the publication of the Azadlig newspaper in 2016 there were no significant printed opposition publications in the country.

In May 2017, the websites of Radio Azadlig, Azadlig and Meydan.TV, and the Azerbaijan Hour program were blocked.

On August 24, the director of the Turan news agency, Mehman Aliyev, was arrested. However, he was subsequently released, and on November 2 the case was closed.

Restriction of citizens' access to legal protection due to the restriction of their representation in courts only by members of the bar association is also noted. There are 156 political prisoners in the country.

This most recent international report was published on April 20. The presidential administration of Azerbaijan, does not completely reject the claims, but considers it biased.

Assistant to the head of state for socio-political issues Ali Hasanov accused the US State Department of biased attitude towards Azerbaijan. According to Ali Hasanov, the report is biased. In his opinion, specific facts "are biased in the interests of certain circles."

"We do not accept biased statements that diminish the image of the authorities on the basis of some dubious "facts", and regard them as having no serious grounds for subjective judgments," Hasanov commented.

This rejection of the document was confirmed after the presidential elections on April 11 by a new wave of arrests, abductions and beatings of opponents of the regime.

And all this happened at a time when the Azerbaijani Ombudsman announced the human rights month from May 18 to June 18.

As a member of the Civil Society Working Group on drawing up a list of political prisoners, Samir Kazimli, to be more exact, "The Human Rights Month" would be more accurately called "The Month of Human Rights Violation".

The trend indicates that the human rights situation will deteriorate steadily, unless there is a consolidated local and international counteraction to such a policy of official Baku. Some signals of opposition come from society and the international community. The near future will show how strong and effective they are.