AZERBAIJAN CRACKS DOWN WHILE CHAIRING COUNCIL OF EUROPE
13 October 2014 Last updated at 00:26
By Rayhan DemytrieBBC South Caucasus correspondent Azerbaijan currently
chairs the Council of Europe, a decision that has angered the country’s
critics Continue reading the main story
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“We are the last of the Mohicans,” says Leila Alieva. “First the
government weakened the opposition, then targeted independent media,
and now us – the NGOs.”
Her research institute, the Centre for National and International
Studies in Azerbaijan. is one of dozens of pro-democracy
non-governmental organisations under investigation by the Azeri
authorities.
And the crackdown is taking place as oil-rich Azerbaijan chairs
Europe’s leading pro-democracy institution, the Council of Europe.
In most cases the authorities have frozen bank accounts or launched
tax inspections, forcing NGOs that received foreign grants to suspend
projects.
Other organisations include Transparency International, Irex, National
Endowment for Democracy and Oxfam.
So far Ms Alieva has managed to escape prosecution. But many of her
peers have been less fortunate.
Azerbaijan is a key European energy partner and Western oil companies
have boosted its economic growth Torn apart
In recent months, the pressure on the government’s critics has
intensified.
Two prominent human rights activists, Leyla Yunus and Rasul Jafarov,
were arrested in late July. They had been compiling a list of
Azerbaijan’s political prisoners.
Their names have since been added to the document.
Rasul Jafarov (R) took part in Sing for Democracy protests during
the 2012 Eurovision song contest
The list records 98 individuals in detention, among them human rights
activists, opposition members, journalists and bloggers.
The charges against them range from espionage and drugs and weapons
possession to hooliganism and tax evasion.
Mrs Yunus, a veteran human rights campaigner and an advocate of
reconciliation with neighbouring Armenia, won one of France’s most
prestigious awards, the Legion of Honour, last year.
Her husband, Arif Yunus, is a respected historian.
Both were charged with high treason.
“After 36 years of living together we are in different cells in
different prisons,” Mrs Yunus wrote in a letter to her husband in
late August.
“We just never would have predicted that the 21st Century would bring
the repression of the 1930s,” she said.
Veteran campaigner Leyla Yunus has advocated reconciliation with
neighbouring Armenia
Human Rights Watch has described the charges against the couple as
“completely bogus”.
“These are the towering figures of civil society, who we felt were
more or less untouchable. But apparently no-one is untouchable in
Azerbaijan. At this stage all critical civil society is pretty much
exterminated,” says Georgi Gogia, the group’s senior researcher in
the Caucasus.
The Azeri government denies the charges are politically motivated.
“The rule of law is guaranteed in Azerbaijan. The case of any
individual relates to the specific criminal offences and has nothing
to do with their political and human rights-related activities,”
said Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev, in a
written statement to the BBC.
Critics have frequently been targeted since pro-democracy protests
in 2011 erupted on the streets of Baku, inspired by the so-called
Arab Spring.
But with Azerbaijan chairing the Council of Europe, questions have
been raised about its ability to respect the 47-nation organisation’s
founding principles.
“It’s shocking that the chairman is basically a dictatorship using its
chairmanship period this summer to arrest literally every three days
all the critical minds that defend the very value of the institution,”
says Gerald Knauss, who heads the Berlin-based European Stability
Initiative (ESI).
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev addresses the Council of Europe in
Strasbourg in June
Azerbaijan’s chairmanship may have hurt the Council’s reputation,
the secretary-general’s spokesman Daniel Holtgen concedes.
However, he says: “Our member states want us to engage and not
disengage with Azerbaijan. None of the member states asked to postpone
or cancel Azerbaijan’s chairmanship.”
The reluctance of Council of Europe members to sanction Azerbaijan may
in part be down to Europe’s relationship with the oil-rich nation as
a key energy supplier and trade partner, and to multi-billion-dollar
investments by Western oil companies, which have helped boost
Azerbaijan’s GDP to $73.5bn (£45bn; 58bn euros) in 2013.
Fuelling protest
In September, oil giant BP celebrated the start of the Southern
Gas Corridor – a $45bn project that will deliver Azeri gas directly
to Europe.
Before the ceremony, which also marked BP’s 20 years of co-operation
with Azerbaijan, Human Rights Watch wrote to the company’s chief
executive to take a stance against the crackdown on civil rights.
BP did not respond to the letter publicly but, in a written statement
to the BBC, said that it believed that the government of Azerbaijan
had a primary responsibility to protect human rights and that the
company was “ready to implement their guidance in this regard”.
So far, there has been little guidance from the Azeri government. It
maintains that civil liberties are being respected in Azerbaijan.
Mr Hajiyev, the foreign ministry spokesman, says there are 3,000
domestic NGOs registered in the country that the government is prepared
to support.
But those that receive funding from abroad use the money for “dubious
purposes, to provoke disorder and instability”.
“We all know how some other countries have seriously suffered from
this type of foreign intervention,” Mr Hajiyev says. “Azerbaijan is
determined not to fall victim to such kinds of charity.”
Leila Alieva says that in targeting pro-democracy NGOs and other
critical voices in the country the authorities wanted to avoid
scenarios similar to Ukraine’s Euromaidan movement that toppled the
Yanukovych government earlier this year.
“If you look at the pictures of those arrested, they are the cream
of our society. Probably in other countries they would have been
appointed as ministers.”
From: Baghdasarian
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29559009