JAN. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that in Azerbaijan people’s right to freedom of expression and the freedom to gather had worsened in 2013. In its annual report, HRW said the presidential election in October 2013 had been the trigger for most of the crackdown.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)
JAN. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov has expanded the number of crimes that can be punishable under anti-terrorism laws, local media reported.
The authorities have said this move was necessary to protect the country from Islamic militants who have previously attacked government targets. Human rights defenders, though, said the expansion was an excuse to lock up more people and silence the government’s critics.
It will now be punishable by up to seven years in prison if a person is convicted of the loosely defined term of training for a terrorist act.
The expansion of the state’s anti-terrorist powers came shortly after the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) released its annual global report.
HRW was bleak on Uzbekistan.
“Uzbekistan’s human rights record remained abysmal across a wide spectrum of violations,” HRW said in its report.
HRW also accused the United States and the EU of ignoring these human rights violations in return for help extracting their soldiers from Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)
JAN. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Lankaran, south Azerbaijan, sentenced Yadigar Sadiqov, a political activist for the opposition Musavat party, to jail for six years for hooliganism. Sadiqov denied the allegations and described the verdict as politically motivated. Police arrested Sadiqov in June for allegedly beating a man.
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(News report from Issue No. 167, published on Jan. 15 2014)
JAN. 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Tashkent released from prison Khasan Choriev, the 71-year-old father of a United States-based Uzbek human rights activist, media reported. Mr Choriev had been convicted in August 2013 of rape, an allegation that his supporters said was fabricated. The authorities said Mr Choriev had earned his amnesty through his good behaviour.
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(News report from Issue No. 167, published on Jan. 15 2014)
DEC. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) –The forced sterilisation of women in Uzbekistan is still a widespread practice, media reported quoting a report by the US-based Open Society Foundations. The report, initially presented in New York on Dec. 13, said that doctors in Uzbekistan were under pressure to sterilise women to combat population growth.
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(News report from Issue No. 166, published on Jan. 8 2014)
JAN. 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human rights groups have said they are concerned about the pre-trial conditions of Anar Mammadli, arrested last month in Azerbaijan on tax evasion charges, media reported. Mr Mammadli is the head of the independent Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center and has previously criticised Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
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(News report from Issue No. 166, published on Jan. 8 2014)
DEC. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rights groups criticised Turkmenistan’s parliamentary election, officially heralded as the start of multi-party politics, as mere window dressing. The vote on Dec. 15 was the first time an election in Turkmenistan has been contested by two parties. In reality the opposition party was staunchly pro-president.
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(News report from Issue No. 166, published on Jan. 8 2014)
DEC. 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Under pressure from the international community, Uzbekistan has reduced its use of students and school children to pick its cotton harvest but instead has increased the number of older professionals forced into fields, the New York Times reported.
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(News report from Issue No. 165, published on Dec. 18 2013)
DEC. 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a new report, the media freedom lobby group the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) ranked Azerbaijan as one of the worst 10 countries in the world for locking up reporters and editors the authorities dislike. Media and human rights groups have criticised Azerbaijan throughout the year for its heavy handed treatment of journalists.
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(News report from Issue No. 165, published on Dec. 18 2013)
DEC. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Baku arrested Anar Mammadli, a relatively high-profile election monitor who had criticised the government, for tax evasion illegal entrepreneurship and falsifying vote results.
A government crackdown on dissidents has characterised the last few years in Azerbaijan and opposition leaders were quick to describe the arrest of Mr Mammadli as political.
They could also have described it as clunky.
A few days after police arrested Mr Mammadli, foreign dignitaries, including Britain foreign minister William Hague were in Baku to witness the final signing of a new investment project by a consortium of foreign energy companies led by Britain’s BP to develop the second phase of the giant Shah Deniz gas field in the Caspian Sea.
Human rights groups didn’t miss an opportunity to criticise Western countries for buying energy from Azerbaijan.
Mr Mamadli was head of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center which receives funding from the US’ National Democratic Institution. His supporters said that the government has been trying to silence him for years.
The day before his arrest, the Azerbaijani authorities sanctioned a seemingly anti-government rally. It was attended by a few hundred people in a square on the outskirts of Baku. They demonstrated against rising prices and shouted support for pro-EU demonstrators in Kiev.
The authorities may have sanctioned the protest to show visiting foreign dignitaries that dissent has a voice in Azerbaijan. If that was their aim, the arrest of Mr Mammadli severely dents that perception.
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(News report from Issue No. 165, published on Dec. 18 2013)
