Azerbaijan jails two rights campaigners

Two human rights defenders in Azerbaijan who were campaigning against politically motivated arrests have been imprisoned.

The prosecutions come as the country prepares to host the inaugural European Games.

These and other cases are part of what human rights groups have called a wider crackdown on civil society under president Ilham Aliyev, who has long been accused of corruption, rigged elections and persecution of critics.

Intigam Aliyev, a lawyer who has taken hundreds of cases to the European court of human rights and trained many other advocates, was sentenced on Wednesday to seven and a half years in prison on what Human Rights Watch called “bogus charges” of tax evasion, illegal business activities, embezzlement and abuse of authority. His health has declined since he was detained in August, and a medical report in October reportedly found conditions requiring hospitalisation.

Last Thursday, Rasul Jafarov was handed a six and a half year prison sentence on similar charges. Jafarov had been planning a Sport for Rights campaign to raise awareness about political prisoners in the runup to the European Games, and he and Aliyev had been compiling a list of victims of politically motivated arrests.

Amnesty International said the convictions were part of an attempt by the authorities to “sweep all of the country’s problems under the carpet as they prepare to host the largest European sports event”. About 6,000 athletes are expected to take part in the European Games in Baku from 12 to 28 June. The competition resembles the Pan American and Asian games and is part of the qualification process for the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The UK is sending 163 athletes to the new event.

Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights and other organisations condemned the rulings against Jafarov and Aliyev, and HRW called for participating countries to “make clear they will not send high-level delegations to the opening of the games unless these prisoners are freed and the government’s crackdown on independent voices ends”.

Although Ilham Aliyev’s human rights record has been poor since he succeeded his father as president in 2003, Azerbaijan is a potential western ally on the borders of Russia and Iran. Rich in natural gas, it could also provide an alternative to Russian energy, and leaders in the United States and Europe have been slow to condemn its rights violations.

The past year has seen a rise in repression. Last May, two members of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center were given prison sentences after they documented widespread violations during Aliyev’s re-election in 2013. Two activists, Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif Yunusov, and journalists Khadija Ismayilova and Rauf Mirqadirov are among those government critics currently facing criminal charges. Amnesty International has named 20 prisoners of conscience in Azerbaijan.

Several “anti-NGO” laws also came into effect in 2014. According to Giorgi Gogia, a HRW worker who was refused entrance to Azerbaijan before the trials of Jafarov and Aliyev, the authorities have frozen the bank accounts of some 50 NGOs and have not approved any foreign grants to NGOs for more than a year.