Civil Society: The Council of Europe should put pressure on Baku

Large group of civil society representatives in Azerbaijan appealed to the Council of Europe with request to obtain from Baku the release of  political prisoners. In the light of the Azerbaijan's joining the Committee of the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe, the presence of prisoners of conscience in the country is nonsense, the statement says.

The appeal was delivered today in Strasbourg, Council of Europe Secretary General, PACE, the European Commissioner for Human Rights and other structures.

“We, the civil society of Azerbaijan, urge the Council of Europe to take Azerbaijan to task for its failure to protect basic human rights. Azerbaijan's human rights record is inconsistent with standards embraced by the pan-European human rights organization, the Council of Europe, and so its chairmanship, which will start in May, risks undermining the integrity of the institution's human rights principles.

Council of Europe (CoE) member states have undertaken to respect fundamental freedoms. We are aware that democracy is in poor health in several other member countries, and all eyes are now on Russia. However, Azerbaijan is in particularly serious and constant breach of its binding and fundamental commitments to ensure freedoms of expression, assembly and association.

When Azerbaijan assumes the chairmanship on May 16, the CoE and the public will look to it to embody and project CoE values. So far, the government has created a difficult environment for human rights that is out of line with CoE standards and inconsistent with leadership of an organization grounded in human rights principles.

The journalists, bloggers and human rights defenders and protesters who have expressed critical or opposing opinions have continued to be arrested, detained and/or imprisoned. They are regularly harassed and subject to attacks while carrying out their work.

On March 17, two political activists, Ilgar Mammadov and Tofig Yagublu were sentenced to a lengthy prison term on fabricated charges, simply for being critical of the government. The U.S. Embassy in Baku, UK Foreign Commonwealth Office, the EU and French Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly denounced the verdict and recognized it as “politically motivated”.

Anar Mammadli, chairman of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDSC), a leading independent election monitoring group in Azerbaijan that has been observing elections in the country for more than 12 years, has been in pretrial custody since December 2013 under bogus charges of tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship, abuse of office, service forgery and appropriation or plunder of property. If convicted he may face up to 12-year imprisonment.

There are at least 17 prisoners of conscience in Azerbaijan, recognized as such by Amnesty International, imprisoned solely in connection with their attempts to peacefully exercise their right to freedom of expression.

We are concerned by laws which restrict civil society and which have been used to justify the wave of crackdown on human rights civil society organizations.

 We are concerned by the arbitrary arrest, detention, and prosecution of peaceful protesters, journalists, bloggers, youth and opposition activists, and reports of their ill-treatment in detention and prisons.

We are concerned by an environment in which laws are used to arbitrarily restrict freedoms of expression, assembly, and association.

We call on the government of Azerbaijan to carry out quickly and consistently the human rights reforms that it has promised the CoE it will make and that  are required of it as an CoE member. As an urgent step to be taken before the chairmanship the government should immediately release all prisoners of conscience; drop all charges against them.” -03D-