Robert Bradtke: US concerned over crackdowns on civil society and opposition in Azerbaijan

Top US diplomat has expressed Washington's concerns over government crackdowns on civil society --especially human rights defenders, NGOs and independent media- in the OSCE area, including Azerbaijan.

"The crackdowns have intensified:" Ambassador Robert Bradtke, head of the US delegation at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, which took place in Warsaw last week, said, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

"Independent activists in Azerbaijan have been facing increased pressure, manifested by interrogations, detentions, legislation further restricting NGO financing, and the closure of the facility of Free Thought University, a nonpartisan forum established by young activists to develop critical analytical skills and independent thinking," he emphasized.

Although government officials often seek to justify crackdowns on peaceful civil society activity on national security grounds, these rationalizations turn the OSCE's concept of comprehensive security on its head.

"These crackdowns are short-sighted and ultimately counter-productive. The suppression of civil society promotes instability over the long term," he added while describing the situation in the member countries.

For Ambassador Bradtke, while the ability to leave and to return to one's country, and to move freely within one's own country, is a fundamental freedom which states are obligated to respect under international law, some participating states, however, continue to take deliberate actions that interfere with the exercise of this fundamental freedom in contravention of international law and their OSCE commitments.

Azerbaijan, he underscored, continues to prevent the foreign travel of Popular Front Party chairman Ali Kerimli by refusing to renew his passport. 

"Since 2006, the government has cited an outstanding complaint against him from 1994 as the reason for the refusal, although it had renewed Kerimli's passport without objection on several occasions in the years since the complaint was filed," he said. -25В-