Azerbaijan’s government is being accused of cracking down on media and civil society activism before the country’s hosting of crucial UN climate talks later this year.
Human Rights Watch has found at least 25 instances of the arrest or sentencing of journalists and activists in the past year, almost all of whom remain in custody.
Many campaigners and civil society groups have expressed their concerns that climate advocacy was being stifled amid a media clampdown. Azerbaijan will host the UN Cop29 climate summit over two weeks in November, when nearly 200 governments, including dozens of heads of state, are expected to thrash out a new global approach to providing the funds needed to tackle the climate crisis.
Azerbaijan, which is said to be an authoritarian state where media and civic freedoms are curtailed, is regarded as one of the world’s most corrupt countries, coming 154th out of 180 states in a ranking by Transparency International last year.
There is said to be little effective political opposition and the president, Ilham Aliyev, won more than 92% of the vote in elections in February to take a fifth consecutive term. His father was Heydar Aliyev, who led the country under Soviet rule and was installed as president after a military coup in 1993 followed the breakup of the eastern bloc.
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Azerbaijan is also facing accusations of holding political prisoners. A war with neighbouring Armenia last year over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region ended with 100,000 people being displaced from their homes.
One of Aliyev’s top advisers said a few weeks ago that the government intended to make Cop29 a “Cop of peace”, and to call for a Cop truce in which hostilities would be suspended around the world for the duration of the talks.
Campaigners raised their concerns at a pre-Cop29 meeting of governments in Bonn, where the secretariat for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is based. Officials from around the world are in the midst of two weeks of meetings to discuss the key issues that will dominate the Cop29 summit, including the vexed question of how to provide sufficient finance to help the developing world cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of global heating.
A protest was held at the entrance to the Bonn talks on Friday evening – the midpoint of the discussions – calling for the release of 23 Armenian political prisoners held in Azerbaijan. Some protesters accused the government of genocide.
Myrto Tilianaki, a senior environmental advocate at Human Rights Watch, highlighted the case of Anar Mammadli, a member of the Human Rights Houses network, who was arrested on 29 April on smuggling charges. He is a founder of the Climate of Justice Initiative, which aims to use Cop29 to push for environmental justice in Azerbaijan.
Ibad Bayramov is campaigning for the release of his father, Gubad Ibadoghlu, a research fellow at the London School of Economics and civil rights activist, who was imprisoned last summer and whose health has badly deteriorated, requiring urgent medical treatment which his family say he is not receiving.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
