An Azerbaijani environmental activist waves a nationwide flag throughout a protest in opposition to what they declare is prohibited mining on the Lachin hall, the one land hyperlink between the Armenian-populated breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh area and Armenia.
Tofik Babayev/AFP through Getty Pictures
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Tofik Babayev/AFP through Getty Pictures
Human rights activists and lawmakers in the US are calling for Azerbaijan to finish alleged abuses of civil society teams and ethnic Armenians forward of a worldwide local weather change summit the nation will host in November.
A brand new report from Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now says Azerbaijan is finishing up an “escalating crackdown” on authorities critics and activists. That features the arrest this spring of human-rights advocate Anar Mammadli, who co-founded a bunch to work on points associated to local weather justice.
The report was printed days after dozens of U.S. lawmakers urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken to push for the discharge of political prisoners and hostages in Azerbaijan, a serious oil and fuel producer on the Caspian Sea that borders Russia, Iran and Armenia. The lawmakers mentioned Azerbaijan carried out an ethnic cleaning final 12 months in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority enclave. And so they pointed to a State Division report that discovered “significant human rights issues” within the nation, together with credible stories of arbitrary detentions and illegal or arbitrary killings.
U.S. lawmakers informed Blinken that the upcoming COP29 local weather negotiations in Azerbaijan provide “a pivotal platform” to advertise power safety within the area and to assist international locations like Armenia lower their dependence on Russia for pure fuel. The criticism of Azerbaijan additionally comes in opposition to the backdrop of rising concern globally that grassroots efforts to restrict and adapt to local weather change are being met with state pushback and human rights abuses.
“When civic space is actively shut down, the voices of those most affected by the climate crisis are at risk of being excluded from the negotiations,” Myrto Tilianaki, a senior advocate for the atmosphere and human rights at Human Rights Watch, mentioned at a press convention Tuesday. “And that is a major problem, because if their lived experiences and solutions aren’t heard, the policies that come out of these talks might not fully reflect their needs or protect their rights.”
Azerbaijan’s embassy in Washington disputed the report from Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now. It mentioned all the circumstances are being dealt with appropriately, and that it “goes against the rule of law to try to interfere with ongoing domestic legal processes.”
Responding to the sooner allegations from U.S. lawmakers, the embassy mentioned Azerbaijan is a sufferer of an “orchestrated disinformation campaign.”
The collection of Azerbaijan to host this 12 months’s local weather talks reveals the nation is “a responsible and credible member of the international community,” the embassy mentioned in a press release. It added that “human rights have nothing to do with permissiveness to engage in illegal activities.”
The report from Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now says latest arrests of activists and media figures in Azerbaijan had been primarily linked to legal guidelines limiting nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The arrests had been politically motivated, the report says, and “follow well-established, abusive methods the government has used for many years to curtail freedom of speech and freedom of association in the country.”
In a lot of the circumstances documented within the report, individuals who labored for or had been concerned with unregistered NGOs and unbiased media shops had been charged with smuggling cash into Azerbaijan. A few of these folks had been additionally charged with crimes comparable to unlawful entrepreneurship, forgery and tax evasion, in accordance with the report. In different circumstances, folks had been charged with extremism, drug possession, counterfeiting and treason.
The circumstances and timing of most of these arrests “strongly suggest that the criminal charges were merely a pretext intended to punish and put an end to activists’ legitimate work,” in accordance with Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now.
Azerbaijan was picked to host this 12 months’s United Nations local weather talks after Russia blocked bids from international locations within the European Union, which has supported Ukraine in its conflict with Moscow.
Eventually 12 months’s local weather convention within the United Arab Emirates, international locations agreed to maneuver away from fossil fuels, the principle driver of human-caused international warming. Nonetheless, Azerbaijan has prompt the world can meet its local weather targets whereas persevering with to provide fossil fuels.
Oil and fuel pays for a big share of Azerbaijan’s finances, and the nation is poised to extend fuel manufacturing by a 3rd over the subsequent decade, in accordance with an evaluation by International Witness, an environmental and human rights group.
“I have always said that having oil and gas deposits is not our fault. It’s a gift from God,” Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, mentioned at a convention earlier this 12 months. “We must not be judged by that. We must be judged based on how we use these reserves for the development of the country, to reduce poverty and unemployment, and on what our targets are with respect to the green agenda.”
One of many circumstances highlighted by Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now includes an economist named Gubad Ibadoghlu who was arrested on costs associated to the manufacturing of counterfeit foreign money and extremism. Ibadoghlu has argued that common residents in Azerbaijan don’t profit from the nation’s oil and fuel reserves as a result of revenues are mismanaged. And he not too long ago examined plans for larger power cooperation between Azerbaijan and the European Union, questioning how a lot fuel Azerbaijan might ship to Europe. If he’s convicted, the report says Ibadoghlu faces 17 years in jail.
