29th Session Human Rights Council: Statement: Situation of Human Rights Defenders in Azerbaijan

Mr.President,

OMCT and FIDH have been documenting a trulyunprecedented crackdown against civil society in AZERBAIJAN.

The repression has particularly escalated overthe past year, as the date of the Baku European Games approached[1]. Theresult is the arbitrary arrest and detention on trumped-up charges of almostall prominent human rights defenders and journalists, notably: Leyla Yunus,member of OMCT General Assembly, Arif Yusunov, Intigam Aliyev, RasulJafarov, Khadija Ismayilova, Hilal Mammadov, Anar Mammadli and RaufMirqadirov. This occurs in a context of new laws restricting freedom ofassociation, the freezing of bank accounts of major independent human rightsgroups. Today any credible and independent human rights work by civil societyhas become impossible.

A paradigmatic example is that defenders such as ourcolleagues Leyla Yunus and Intigam Aliyev remain imprisoned despite theirdeteriorating health condition due to the refusal of Azerbaijan to at leastrelease them on humanitarian grounds.

It is important to highlight that the repression seemsto be a strategy closely linked with the celebration of the Games in Baku inorder to prevent criticism from spoiling the event as it happened with theEurovision contest.

The Observatory welcomes the steps forward taken bysome major political and sports stakeholders from various States andinternational organisations such as the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the UN,the European Parliament, the German Olympic Sports Confederation or the Germanand the Swiss Governments just to mention some.

Mr President,

The Observatory considers that this Council has totake decisive action to respond to the human rights crisis in Azerbaijan. Andwe call on all states united here in the council to leave geopolitical andeconomic interests aside and to take a stand for human rights in Azerbaijan.

It is time for this Council to join the call for theimmediate and unconditional release of all arbitrarily jailed human rightsdefenders and journalists before it is too late.

We thank youMr. President.

[1] See the Fact-Finding Mission Report of the Observatory for the Protection ofHuman Rights Defenders (joint OMCT-FIDH programme) available at http://www.omct.org/human-rights-defenders/reports-and-publications/azerbaijan/2015/04/d23097/ and https://www.fidh.org/International-Federation-for-Human-Rights/eastern-europe-central-asia/azerbaijan/azerbaijan-repression-escalates-in-run-up-to-european-games.