Human rights in Azerbaijan

Baku/10.12.21/Turan: Today, on International Human Rights Day, this topic is still relevant in Azerbaijan.  Anar Mammadli, a human rights activist and head of the Democracy Studies and Elections Monitoring  Center, spoke about the state of affairs with human rights in Azerbaijan in the program "Difficult Question".

According to him, there is no need to talk about any progress or even insignificant progress in this matter. Human rights crisis in Azerbaijan is going through. Many proposals and ideas were put forward to overcome this crisis, but the authorities were indifferent to human rights. And in essence, the authorities are involved in the crisis with human rights, they are responsible for it. The source of all these problems is power itself.

“There is not a single area in the field of human rights where progress has been observed. For example, in connection with political freedoms, the situation remains dramatic. In recent years, in such spheres as freedom of expression and freedom of assembly or freedom of association, one can speak of regression rather than any progress,” Mammadli said.

According to the human rights activist, in the field of protection of socio-economic rights, labor rights, the same picture and there are also problems. “In the country, inflation is increasing more and more, and it especially intensified during the quarantine. Citizens suffer from the severity of socio-economic problems, but in the socio-economic sphere, we do not see any serious success,” he said.

According to Mammadli, the problems with property rights are related to the rule of law. In his opinion, serious attention should be paid to the ensuring a fair trial.

“Azerbaijan is still on a par with countries where there is no independent judicial system, an independent human rights system. It is no coincidence that among the member states of the Council of Europe, Azerbaijan has been in the top five in recent years for violations of the rights and freedoms of citizens and in the number of related decisions of the European Court of Human Rights,” Mammadli said.

Mammadli admitted that, unlike the practice of 2013-2014, when systemic repressions were carried out against politicians, heads of NGOs, human rights defenders, journalists, the media and human rights organizations were closed, this has not happened in recent years. However, according to him, this does not mean at all that there is no political repression. “There are over a hundred political prisoners in the country so far,” he stressed.—0—