Azerbaijan Strengthened Its Position in Ranks of "Consolidated Authoritarian Regimes"

Azerbaijan in 2012 further consolidated its position in the ranks of authoritarian countries of Eurasia, finishing fourth in the list of 7 "consolidated authoritarian regimes", second only to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Belarus.

 

In its annual report, "Nations in Transit 2013" international organization Freedom House, which covers the analysis in 2012, says that in five of the 12 Eurasian countries (former Soviet Union) has worsened the state of civil society, including Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Belarus, which have increased their prosecution alleged enemies through legal and extra-judicial means.

 

Events of the year show that consolidation of authoritarian rule was the price of an increase in corruption, media censorship, suppression of civil society and, in some cases, violence against the political opposition.

 

During 2012 the despotic regimes in Eurasia actively fought the democratic changes. Their constant reaction to a new activity within the country and the ongoing political unrest in the Middle East have been more forceful attacks on identified opponents, whether lawyers striking oil workers, bloggers, dissidents, religious nonconformists, ecological activists, human rights activists and opposition leaders. In some cases, governments already known for repression introduced new, arguably, redundant measures to further limit dissent after long-term practice of censorship, subjugated the judicial system, and sometimes resorted to violence. As a result, government institutions in autocratic countries in the region failed to cope with their responsibilities, lost independence and weakened to corruption.

 

In such a grim situation Russia was in the forefront as a role model.

 

A similar pattern prevailed among the autocratic regimes neighboring Russia, where civil society activists have been targeted and especially mistreated. Regimes in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Belarus have tightened prosecution of alleged enemies through available legal and non-legal mechanisms.

 

The wave of persecution of civil society in Eurasia is alarming with its scale and brutality, but to a certain extent, this is a predictable continuation of the trend observed for more than ten years. Executive power in most of these countries gradually absorbed or destroyed anything that might threaten its monopoly on power, including the independence of the judiciary, legislative control, the official political opposition, politically independent business community and critical media. Civil society organizations, as far as they have been allowed to work, was one of the last links of the chain.

 

The gap in the democratic development of Azerbaijan and its neighbors in the Caucasus in 2012, continued to grow. The calm and quite inclusive elections in Georgia and Armenia made a sharp contrast with violent repression of public meetings in preparation for the contest "Eurovision" song in Baku, as well as the introduction of significant fines for participants in unauthorized rallies in the country. Meanwhile, in the investigation of the foreign media were uncovered enormous personal assets of President Ilham Aliyev. This led to the adoption of legal amendments to protect the secret of the structure of corporate ownership and further limit the ability of journalists to expose corruption. When the authorities of Hungary took an unexpected decision to repatriate former officer Ramil Safarov, a prisoner in jail for the brutal murder of an Armenian officer during training in Budapest in 2004, in Baku the government met him as a hero, and immediately released, thereby delaying the progress of the negotiations with the Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

 

Improve rankings in 2012 were recorded in only three countries of Eurasia - Georgia, Armenia and Moldova.

 

Most importantly, the democratic countries should recognize that the negative trends in the region are not a temporary phenomenon but the result of decisive action by more shrewd and unscrupulous leaders on permanent preservation of power, no matter what the price for their people. As recent events in the Middle East and the region's own history showed, the damage done by permanent repression can continue to destroy democratic institutions and pose a risk to other countries for a long time after the departure of the current rulers from the stage, summarize the report's authors.

 

As the agency Turan noted, in 2013 crackdown on civil society in Azerbaijan increased and the country has a chance to take the lead in the ranks of the "consolidated authoritarian regimes" in the annual report "Nations in Transit 2014". -0 -