United Nations human rights experts* today condemned the growing
tendency to prosecute prominent human rights defenders in Azerbaijan,
and urged the Government “to show leadership and reverse the trend of
repression, criminalization and prosecution of human rights work in the
country.”
“We are appalled by the increasing incidents of surveillance,
interrogation, arrest, sentencing on the basis of trumped-up charges,
assets-freezing and ban on travel of the activists in Azerbaijan,” they
said. “The criminalization of rights activists must stop. Those who were
unjustifiably detained for defending rights should be immediately
freed.”
The experts highlighted the specific cases of Leyla Yunus, director of
the Azerbaijani Institute of Peace and Democracy; Arif Yunus, head of
Conflict Studies in the Institute of Peace and Democracy; Rasul Jafarov,
coordinator of Art of Democracy and head of Human Rights Club; and
Intigam Aliyev, chair of Legal Education Society.
“We are alarmed at the wave of politically-motivated repression of
activists in reprisal for their legitimate work in documenting and
reporting human rights violations,” they noted, reiterating their grave
concerns about the deteriorating situation in the country for the third
time in less than a year.
The UN experts reminded the authorities of their legal obligations
under international human rights law, which guarantees everyone in
Azerbaijan the rights to freedom of expression, of peaceful assembly and
association, without undue interference.
“The State’s primary responsibility should be to protect its civil
society activists from intimidation, harassment, threats or attacks,”
they stressed.
“Azerbaijan’s recent membership of the UN Committee on Non-Governmental
Organizations does not square well with the authorities’ actions
directed at stifling freedoms on the ground,” the UN rights experts
noted.
(*) The experts: The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom or opinion and expression, David Kaye.
The United Nations human rights experts are part of what it is known as
‘Special Procedures’, the largest body of independent experts in the UN
Human Rights system. ‘Special Procedures’ is the general name of the
independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms of the Human Rights
Council that address either specific country situations or thematic
issues in all parts of the world. Currently, there are 38 thematic
mandates and 14 mandates related to countries and territories, with 73
mandate holders.
