Blinken Honors Rufat Safarov With Top Human Rights Award, Calls Azerbaijan To Release All 'Unjustly Detained'

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken Tuesday urged the Azerbaijan government to release human rights champion Rufat Safarov 'immediately' – as well as all the other journalists, rights defenders, political opponents, and others that are unjustly detained, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

Speaking at a ceremony at the State Department to recognize the winners of prestigious U.S. human rights award, Blinken said, "last week – just hours after visiting the U.S. Embassy in Baku to get his visa to travel here for this ceremony – Rufat was detained by security officers, and he’s since been placed in pre-trial detention."

Safarov, the director of the local human rights group Defense Line, was among 8 recipients of this year's Secretary of State’s Human Rights Defender Award. The others are from Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Eswatini, Ghana, Kuwait, and the Kyrgyz Republic.

Introducing this year's winners, Under Secretary of State Uzra Zeya pointed at an empty chair for Rufat Safarov, saying he was unjustly detained by the Azerbaijan Government and "we strongly condemn this arrest and call for his immediate release."

Binken in his speech highlighted Safarov's career, reminding that the former investigator blew the whistle on corruption and other abuses he discovered while working in the Prosecutor General’s Office in Azerbaijan, and he hoped those responsible would be held accountable. "Instead, Rufat lost his job," Blinken said.

"He was falsely accused of bribery.  He was sentenced to nine years in prison in a sham trial.  Upon his release, he founded an organization to help people who are targeted for defending human rights, for documenting graft, and other legitimate activities that a government doesn’t like. Defense Line observes their trials.  It visits them in prison, provides support to their families.  It raises awareness about their cases throughout the international community," Blinken concluded.

Since Safarov's arrest last week, the Azerbaijani authorities have detained 6 more journalists — mostly of them affiliated with independent outlet Meydan TV — on currency smuggling charges as well as political analyst Azer Gasimli. 

"You’ve heard us speak to specific cases, and you will hear – see us continue to speak to specific cases," State Department's Spokesperson Matthew Miller told a daily briefing when asked by TURAN for reaction on the latest arrests.

While honoring Rufat's work at the ceremony, Blinken also featured another awardee, Brett Dvorak, who until recently served as a human rights officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baku.

"When human rights defenders, journalists, and other civil society members in Azerbaijan were detained, were threatened, were harassed, they knew that you would be in their corner," Blinken told Dvorak. "We know how much it meant to them.  And today, I’m glad that you can hear how much it means to the [State] department and to your country.  Thank you..."

Dvorak received the 2024 Department of State Human Rights and Democracy Achievement Award.

Both Blinken and Zeya also spoke about accountability tools to hold human rights abusers accountable.

"We expanded our toolkit with the strategic goal of changing behavior and deterring would-be violators," Zeya said. "Through close cooperation with the Departments of Commerce and Treasury, we used export controls and sanctions to hold commercial spyware vendors like NSO Group, Intellexa, Cytrox, and others accountable for selling malicious cyber intrusion tools to those repressing human rights and threatening human rights defenders," she added.

Separately, the State Department Tuesday announced that it was establishing two new visa restriction policies to promote accountability for wrongful, abusive, and unjust detention practices around the world, a critical step to address the growing trend of foreign governments unjustly detaining individuals worldwide.

With these policies, the State Department can impose visa restrictions on individuals who detain people as a pretext for an illegitimate purpose, provide disparate treatment based on a detainee’s nationality, or violate a detainee’s fundamental freedoms, among other concerns.  The visa restrictions can also apply to the immediate family members of an individual engaged in these acts.