Azerbaijan’s Defiance: A Decade of Contempt for the Council of Europe

This report is jointly published by International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) and Campaign to End Repression in Azerbaijan.

Setting the Scene of Azerbaijan’s Contempt for the Council of Europe The report “Quest for Justice in a Climate of Unprecedented Repression”, published in September 2024, examines how the decade-long repression increased ahead of the COP29, the crackdown on human rights defenders, and their organisations, as well as on media and journalists, using the Media Law adopted in 2022, and aiming specifically at Abzas Media, Toplum TV, Kanal 13, and Meydan TV.

Furthermore, it documents how the authorities have weaponised the country’s legal system and abused the criminal legislation to serve a policy of repression. The report brings to light that each major wave of repression is heralded in by the adoption of more laws restricting civil liberties, allowing to criminalise, prosecute, harass, and intimidate any dissenting voice.

The present report documents the policy of repression through the lens of Azerbaijan’s commitments as a member of the Council of Europe, the country’s compliance with the judgments of the European Court for Human Rights, decisions and recommendations made by the Council of Europe’s monitoring bodies, and its engagement with the institution.

This report does not provide a chronology or an indepth analysis of the complex legislative and regulatory frameworks governing civil, media and political freedoms. It focuses on how this structural denial of the exercise of civil and political rights, and the ensuing systemic repression, has been dealt with by the Council of Europe and its institutions. Upon accession to the Council of Europe, Azerbaijan undertook to honour its commitments as spelt out in the Parliamentary Assembly’s Opinion 222 (2000).

Instead, for the past 20 years, it has progressively consolidated a policy of repression and systemic human rights violations, which leaves no space for the exercise of fundamental freedoms and the protection of human rights, leading to cycles of violent crackdowns, such as the wave of repression in 2013- 2014, and the present one.

Over this decade of repression, the authorities continuously abuse their power, applying the same well-established abusive methods to silence dissent by arbitrarily detaining human rights defenders, journalists, and civic activists, and by criminally charging them with spurious offences — a process facilitated by the use of restrictive legislation designed to serve this purpose, and the misuse of criminal law by an obedient judiciary.

The main restrictions of this regulatory system targeted the registration, access to funding and the implementation of activities of NGOs and media outlets, which together with the wide discretion and arbitrariness exercised by the authorities in the interpretation of these laws, progressively eroded the right to freedom of association and media freedoms. The amendments introduced between 2009 and 2015 which facilitated the massive crackdown on civil society are discussed in detail in the report “Quest for Justice in a Climate of Unprecedented Repression.”

For many years, the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) has been issuing opinions to the successive amendments to the NGO laws and other laws regulating rights to other freedoms, putting forth suggestions aimed to bring them in line with international standards. The authorities have consistently ignored them, despite the Venice Commission’s warning of the effect of such laws on the exercise of these rights.

In the decade since that crackdown, no structural reforms called for by the Venice Commission and the European Court’s judgments have been implemented which could have prevented the current repression. Instead, more repressive amendments were brought to the already repressive legislation governing the regulation and funding of associations (NGO laws and laws on grants), the media and political parties, which had been recognised by the Council of Europe’s experts as failing to meet international standards. No efforts have been made to establish the rule of law or to reform the judiciary with the aim of ending its subordination to the executive.

Azerbaijan has continued to disregard the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and their execution, persistently ignored calls to improve the human rights situation in the country, and generally, cooperated with the Council’s institutions selectively and on its own terms. Azerbaijan is experiencing an intensification of the repression, with a new generation of Azerbaijani civil society facing increased repression, which escalated as of the summer of 2023, targeting media and any form of dissent, including members of newly formed democratic movements, trade unionists and academics.

The case of Anar Mammadli, the name behind the Campaign to End Repression in Azerbaijan, is emblematic of this long decade of repression: he has experienced the two waves of repression, first arrested on 16 December 2013 and charged with illegal entrepreneurship, tax evasion and abuse of office, sentenced to over five years in prison and subsequently pardoned in 2016.

While in prison, he was awarded the Vaclav Havel Prize of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; he was not released to attend the ceremony. In April 2018, the ECHR ruled that his detention was unlawful and ordered that his conviction be quashed. Six years later, the Court's judgment has still not been implemented. In April 2024, he was arrested again, this time for smuggling. His new case, and the cases of the human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, media actors and civic and political activists arrested since the acceleration of the crackdown in June 2023, are documented in the report “Quest for Justice”. 2024:

2024 has recorded the sharpest increase and highest number of political prisoners since Azerbaijan’s accession to the Council of Europe in 2001, since the publication of “Quest for Justice”, the repression has continued.

Two weeks after the closure of the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29), the repression picked up further:

• On 3 December 2024, human rights defender Rufat Safarov was detained and charged with “fraud involving significant damage” (Article 178.3.2 of the Criminal Code), “hooliganism” (Article 127.2.3) and “intentional infliction of less serious harm to health” (Article 221.1). If convicted faces 10 years in prison;

• On 6 December, six Meydan TV journalists were detained and charged with “smuggling of foreign currency” (Article 206.3.2 of the Criminal Code), and the next day, placed in pre-trial detention for four months, namely Khayala Agayeva, Aytaj Ahmadova (Tapdig), Aynur Ganbarova (Elgunesh), Ramin Jabrayilzade (Deko), Natig Javadli, and Aysel Umudova;

• On 8 December Azer Gasimli, activist and director of the Institute of Political Management, was arrested and was placed in pre-trial detention pending an investigation for “extortion through threats” (Article 182.2.3 of the Criminal Code). As of 10 December 2024, the number of people detained on politically motivated grounds had increased by 256 per cent compared to February 2023, to 331 people.