New Human Rights Organization - Union for the Freedom of Political Prisoners of Azerbaijan (UFPPA)

Baku / 02.11.18 / Turan: A new human rights organization has been created in Azerbaijan - the Union for the Freedom of Political Prisoners of Azerbaijan, stated the new statement received by Turan. The document recalls that after the failure of the resolution "Political prisoners in Azerbaijan" at the January 2013 session of the PACE, mass repressions against human rights activists, civil society activists and journalists began in Azerbaijan. "Currently, there are no conditions in the country for the work of independent civil society institutions, NGOs, almost all independent media have been destroyed. The number of political prisoners continues to grow," the document says. There are 150 political prisoners in Azerbaijan, while there are only two in Belarus, and 195 political prisoners in Russia with 147 million people. "One of the main tasks of the Union is to widely inform the international community about repression in Azerbaijan, about the situation with political prisoners, to provide a full data bank for each political prisoner," one of the founders of the Union, head of the Center for Monitoring Political Prisoners Elshan Hasanov told Turan. The Union intends to inform leading international human rights organizations, organize hearings on the situation of political prisoners in the Council of Europe, inform the PACE rapporteur, the European Union Foreign Policy Service (EEAS). In addition, it provides for the formation of a support group for the release of political prisoners from among the members of the PACE and the European Parliament. In addition to Hasanov, among the founders of the new human rights structure are: Leila Yunus (director of the Institute of Peace and Democracy), Hilal Mamedov (chief editor of the Tolyshi Sado newspaper), and Eldaniz Guliyev (Chairman of the Union of Intellectuals of Azerbaijan). -06D-