AZERBAIJANI AUTHORITIES DEMONSTRABLY VIOLATE FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS

There are serious problems in Azerbaijan's meeting its international obligations on freedom of media and expression, association and assembly. The reports of the Institute for Reporters Freedom and Safety (IRFS) presented on November 8 highlighted specific violations of these freedoms. The researches were carried out with the support of the International Media Support (IMS). The first report "Azerbaijan and the European Union: A Policy Dilemma", which reviews the status of implementation of the country's commitments towards the European Union as laid out in the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement and EU-Azerbaijan Action Plan, was publicized in Brussels at the end of September, said the IRFS Director Emin Huseynov. According to Emin Huseynov, the second report titled "Azerbaijan at the OSCE: Ignoring the Human Dimension" deals with Azerbaijan's failure to strictly comply with OSCE recommendations on measures needed to improve the country's human rights record, and was presented in OSCE's Human Dimension meeting held on September 25 in Warsaw. "While Azerbaijan has historically made an effort to cooperate with the OSCE -- at least on the surface -- this year has been a troubled one for the OSCE-Azerbaijan relationship. The Azerbaijani government has expressed increasing hostility towards the organization, culminating in an eventual consensus decision to downgrade the mandate of the OSCE Office in Baku to a Project Coordination Office, which will take effect in January 2014," reads the report. The third report titled "Opinion No.222 Implementation of Azerbaijan's commitments to the Council of Europe in the field of fundamental freedoms" raises alarm over the dire state of the fundamental rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly in Azerbaijan. "We held an event in the framework of PACE's fall session, where we presented this report. We discussed the real situation of human rights in Azerbaijan at our event supported by the Polish and Lithuanian MPs and our individual meetings. The title of the report comes from the Opinion No. 222 on the obligations entered into by Azerbaijan while applying for Council of Europe membership in 2001," Huseynov added. Huseynov also noted that before October, 2014, when Azerbaijan will host the summit of OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the country will undertake chairmanship in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in May of 2014, and this is unacceptable for a country with a large number of political prisoners, regressive legislation and a non-transparent law on freedom of information to go for this. "These studies are based on facts and reflect the real state of implementation of Azerbaijan's international commitments," said the International Media Support programme manager in Azerbaijan, Gulnara Akhundova. The fourth report presented by IRFS was titled "Azerbaijan and the United Nations: Going through the motions." In preparing the report, the recommendations made at a special hearing of the UN Human Rights Committee were also taken into account. "More than 30 countries put forward 120 recommendations. The Azerbaijani government has agreed on 100 of them. We intend to monitor the implementation of these recommendations until the next hearings, which will be held in four years," said Huseynov. In its another report titled "False Freedom Internet Freedom in Azerbaijan After 7th Internet Governance Forum", the group has documented various forms of threats facing the freedom of the internet and numerous worrisome developments taking place in Azerbaijan following the 7th Internet Governance Forum, particularly on the eve of 2013 presidential election. "Despite assurances from the authorities on freedom of the Internet, the situation has worsened. A legislative change introduced in the first half of 2013 criminalized online defamation. Technical infrastructure of the Internet is also poor. The upload and download speed of the internet in Azerbaijan is six times slower than in Russia and three times than Georgia. Repression of Internet activists has intensified since the eve of presidential election. Currently, at least three bloggers (Zaur Gurbanli, Ilkin Rustemzadeh, and Rashad Ramazanov) are in jail. Most of the nine arrested journalists are members of online media," Huseynov underscored. However, according to Huseynov, arrests of active social networkers give short-term effect, as within less than a month criticism of the government intensifies again. "The IRFS together with partner organizations intends to work actively during the January and April session of PACE. Unless before the end of the year political prisoners are released, we will raise the issue of the restoration of the Institute of Rapporteur on political