Rasul Jafarov among Nominees for Front Line Defenders

The international human rights organization Front Line Defenders will announce the winner of the award in 2015. The ceremony will be held in the Dublin City Hall, Ireland.

The winner will be selected out of five finalists, including the Azerbaijani human rights activist Rasul Jafarov, Chinese Guo Feixiong, Mexican Juan Carlos Solis Flores, Egyptian Yara Salaam and Ecuadorian Diane Marie Rodriguez Zambrano.

All of them are either in prison or in hiding because of their work to protect the rights of others.

The Front Line Defenders Award is presented annually to an activist who has made an exceptional contribution to the protection of human rights in his country.

In a press release the organization noted that Jafarov is one of the most prominent human rights defenders in Azerbaijan, who was arrested on dubious charges.

Rasul Jafarov, one of the most prominent HRDs in Azerbaijan, was arrested on bogus charges of “illegal enterprise, tax evasion, and abuse of official power.” A lawyer by profession, Rasul Jafarov is Head of the Human Rights Club and Coordinator of the Art for Democracy campaign, which has launched several campaigns against politically-motivated imprisonment, including the Sing for Democracy campaign which took place in the run-up to the Eurovision Song Contest in May 2012. On 16 April Rasul was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison, recently reduced by 3 months. –06D---