repression intensifies in the run-up to COP29 organized in Baku

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev during the opening day of the 50th edition of the European House-Ambrossetti forum, on Lake Como in Cernobbio, September 6, 2024. PIERO CRUCIATTI / AFP The authoritarian regime of the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev locks in the information a few weeks before the opening of COP29, which takes place from November 11 to 22 in Baku. At least twenty journalists have been thrown in prison in recent months, along with human rights defenders, trade unionists, lawyers and environmental activists, in this country where oil and gas account for 92% of exports. Known for declaring that “oil is a gift from God,” President Aliyev is increasingly inclined to send those who think otherwise into regime purgatory. The NGOs Freedom Now (FN) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have counted thirty-three Azerbaijani personalities targeted by criminal proceedings, thirty of whom are already behind bars. In a joint report published on October 8 entitled “We try to remain invisible: escalation of repression against civil society and dissident voices in Azerbaijan”, the two NGOs specify that the list was established on the basis of interviews carried out in over the last fourteen months from around forty sources, mainly lawyers, journalists and relatives of detainees. According to HRW and FN, authorities in Baku “use trumped-up and politically motivated criminal charges to pursue and imprison civil society activists, journalists and human rights defenders.” This involves, among other things, an “instrumentalization of the laws governing NGOs to refuse some to register and finance themselves, thus exposing the people affiliated to them to criminal prosecution”. Twenty people out of the thirty-three cases counted are accused of “currency smuggling”, which now seems to be the legal process favored by the repressive apparatus. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers In Azerbaijan, a new turn of the screw against dissident voices before COP29 Add to your selections This is particularly the case of the veteran human rights defender. Anar Mammadli, 46, who had just weeks before his arrest co-founded an environmental defense group. He now faces an eight-year prison sentence. Also among those imprisoned is Gubad Ibadoghlu, 53, a research fellow at the London School of Economics who stood out for his expertise in the transparency of financial flows from hydrocarbons. In very fragile health, he was transferred after nine months in preventive prison to house arrest while awaiting his trial. Accused “wrongly”, according to HRW and FN, of “counterfeiting” and “extremism”, he risks a sentence of seventeen years in prison. You have 44.6% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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