Facts of Violations of Rights Increased � Center for Election Monitoring

Baku / 15.10.19 / Turan: The Center for Election Monitoring and Education for Democracy (hereinafter - the Center) distributed a review of the human rights situation in Azerbaijan in the third quarter of 2019.

The information was collected from open sources. During the review period, 474 violations of rights were recorded on 357 facts, which is significantly more than in the previous quarters.

During the review period, no significant progress was made in the implementation of political and civil rights.

The largest number of violations were related to the exercise of the right to a free trial (83 violations), and in the second quarter there were 65.

In particular, in the third quarter, at politically motivated trials, the decisions were not given reasonable explanations, the applications of the accused were rejected without consideration, the courts did not hesitate to accept the conclusions of the investigation, and complaints of torture were not investigated.

The largest number of violations was recorded in the trials in the Ganja Serious Crimes Court and the Ganja Court of Appeal.

At the same time, the Supreme Court returned to the Court of Appeal the case of blocking the websites of Meydan TV, Turan TV, and the TV programs Azərbaycan Saatı.

During the quarter, there continued to be cases of police calling and administrative arrest of activists for expressing themselves on social networks, and journalists were subjected to violence during coverage of protests.

The Musavat party Board member Tofig Yagublu was summoned to the prosecutor general"s office and warned in writing for comments on social networks on the Internet.

The restrictions on freedom of assembly have been tightened. Most of all, this violation was committed by the Baku Mayor's Office, which either did not give consent to hold rallies or offered remote places for this.

During the review period, foreign travel bans were lifted against five public, political, and civic activists.

However, such politically motivated restrictions apply to 16 individuals.

The Center was established in 2008 and became the successor to the Election Monitoring Center (CEC), established in 2001. The organization is headed by the well-known human rights activist Anar Mammadli.

The Center monitored 15 elections since 2001. The organization carried out more than 600 trainings to train 14 thousand local observers.

The Center is a member of ENEMO (the NGO Network for Monitoring Elections in the OSCE Countries), the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE) and the Global Network of Local Observers. -21D06-