Human Rights Watch: Azerbaijan remains an area of serious violations of human rights

The organization Human Rights Watch  released its annual report on the state of human rights in the world in 2012.  The  section devoted to Azerbaijan,  reads that that the atmosphere  with political activists, independent journalists and opposition was openly hostile. The government used the arrests as an instrument of political revenge and force to disperse peaceful demonstrations.

Azerbaijan hosted the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, casting an international spotlight on the government’s deteriorating human rights record. The atmosphere for political activists and independent and pro-opposition journalists grew acutely hostile. Authorities used imprisonment as a tool for political retribution and forcibly dispersed a number of peaceful demonstrations, indiscriminately arresting activists and passersby. Restrictions on freedom of religion and the prosecution of unregistered religious groups continued. The government intensified its urban renewal campaign in the capital Baku, forcibly evicting thousands of families and illegally demolishing homes.

Foreign actors failed to fully realize the potential of their relationships with the government to press it to honor its human rights obligations.

The report mentions the case of bloggers and journalists: Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, Avaz Zeynalli, Anar Bayramli, Zaur Guliyev and Vugar Gonagova, Hilal Mammadov, Idrak Abbasov, Khadija Ismayilova, etc.

The government limited freedom of assembly by breaking up peaceful protests, in some cases violently, and arresting protesters. In March, at the first sanctioned opposition protest since 2006, police detained two popular musicians as they played at the peaceful gathering. Police beat and denied them access to their lawyer. They were released after five and ten days of detention.

In April, police detained 20 activists distributing flyers encouraging people to attend an opposition rally. Courts sentenced 7 of the activists to 10 to 15 days of detention, and fined or released others.

In the days before and during May’s Eurovision Song Contest, police broke up several protests in Baku’s center. Police rounded up dozens of peaceful demonstrators, forcing them onto buses, and beating some as they did so. The demonstrators were released several hours later.

In October, police rounded up dozens of protesters in an unsanctioned rally in central Baku, roughed them up and forced them into buses. Courts imprisoned 13 on misdemeanor charges for up to 10 days, and fined several others.

In November, the parliament increased sanctions for participating and organizing unauthorized protests, establishing fines of up to 1,000 AZN ($ 1,274) for participation, and 3,000 ($ 3,822) for organization.

Imprisonment on politically motivated charges is a continuing problem. A June 2012 report by a committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) described the cases of 89 political prisoners in Azerbaijan. Just before the report’s publication, nine were released under a presidential pardon. The PACE report documents the cases of journalists, human rights defenders, and activists who remain in detention in Azerbaijan on a range of trumped-up charges in retaliation for their work.

Torture and ill-treatment continue with impunity, and two men died in police custody in 2012. In the first eight months of 2012, the Azerbaijan Committee Against Torture, an independent prison monitoring group, received 136 complaints alleging ill-treatment in custody.

Since 2008, the authorities in Azerbaijan have been implementing a program of urban renewal in Baku, involving illegal expropriation of hundreds of properties—primarily apartments and homes in middle class neighborhoods—to make way for parks, roads, and luxury residential buildings. Most evictees have not received fair compensation based on market values of their properties. In 2012, hundreds of homeowners were affected as the authorities accelerated construction for the Eurovision Song Contest.

The government continued to tighten restrictions on freedom of religion. In December 2011, the president signed legislative amendments criminalizing the illegal production, distribution, and import of religious literature not approved by the state; they were previously administrative offenses. A new criminal code article punishes the creation of a group that undermines social order under the guise of carrying out religious work.

According to Forum 18, an independent international religious freedom monitoring group, police raided several private homes on religion-related grounds.

Police arrested two human rights defenders associated with Kur Civil Union in retaliation for protecting flood victims in southern Azerbaijan. In April 2012, police arrested Ogtay Gulaliyev, the organization’s coordinator, and charged him with hooliganism. In June, police released him, pending investigation and arrested Ilham Amiraslanov, another Kur activist. In September, a court sentenced Amiraslanov to two years imprisonment on trumped-up weapons possession charges. No investigation was made into Gulaliyev’s claim of ill-treatment in custody, and after a preliminary inquiry the prosecutor’s office refused to investigate an ill-treatment complaint by Amiraslanov.

In April, a court sentenced Taleh Khasmammadov, a blogger and human rights defender from Goychay, to a four-year prison term on charges of hooliganism and physically assaulting a public official. Khasmammadov investigated allegations of abuse and corruption by law enforcement officials. Another human rights defender from Goychay region, Vidadi Isganderov, remained in jail after being convicted in August 2011 on false charges of interfering with parliamentary elections.

Azerbaijan Human Rights House, a member of the International Human Rights House Network, remained closed following the Ministry of Justice suspending its registration in March 2011.

While expressing concern about Azerbaijan’s worsening human rights record, the European Union, United States, and other international and regional institutions did not impose policy consequences or make their engagement with Azerbaijan conditional on concrete improvements.

A great number of foreign governments and international organizations condemned President Ilham Aliyev’s decision to pardon Ramil Safarov, a military officer, whom Hungary extradited to Azerbaijan so that he could serve out his life imprisonment term there. In 2004, a Hungarian court convicted Safarov for murdering an Armenian colleague at a NATO-sponsored training in Budapest. Safarov confessed to the crime, which he justified by citing his victim’s ethnicity.

The EU, Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), and the US Embassy in Baku all condemned the assault on journalist Idrak Abbasov, and called on the government to launch a prompt and thorough investigation, to no avail.

In its May European Neighborhood Policy progress report, the EU highlighted Azerbaijan’s failure to meet its commitments regarding electoral processes, human rights protections, and judicial independence. It also, for the first time, addressed concrete recommendations to the authorities.

The European Broadcasting Union, which oversaw the Eurovision Song Contest, made a public commitment to promote freedom of expression in Azerbaijan, but declined to take a strong public stand on the Azerbaijani government’s record. It also refused to urge the government to properly compensate homeowners whose apartments were demolished in connection with the construction of Eurovision-related infrastructure.

While in Baku in June, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, and urged the authorities to release others imprisoned on politically motivated charges.

In a landmark vote on June 26, the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly adopted a report on political prisoners in Azerbaijan. The government had refused to cooperate with the committee’s rapporteur and denied him access to Azerbaijan.

In its March 2012 concluding observations, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) criticized Azerbaijan, for, inter alia, the lack of improvement in the juvenile justice system, and the lack of alternatives to institutionalization for children without families.--0--