At the end of May and the beginning of June 2014, in Azerbaijan the work on the amendment to the Citizenship Act has been started. The Parliament of the Republic of Azerbaijan added a provision that allows for the stripping of citizenship of individuals who “act to the detriment of the country”. This provision is probably targeted against “inconvenient activists” since it will empower the authorities to remove them from the country.
The public authorities have been severely hampering the activities of non-governmental organisations by blocking funding for them. Organisations advocating human rights and democratisation have been forced to register any financial support obtained for their projects with the Ministry of Justice and Azerbaijani authorities have little trust for any international institutions financing human rights and democratisation initiatives. Additionally, a few such organisations are under investigation for alleged money laundering activities. The Azerbaijani Ministry of Justice have begun to refuse to register grants awarded by those institutions, which prevents the use of their funds. In recent weeks private bank accounts of some activists (including Mirvari Gahramanl, Rasul Jafarov, Zohrab Ismayil and Elchin Abdullayev) have been blocked, which left them with no means of subsistence.
Moreover, the authorities make regular arrests of non-governmental and political activists. In April 2014, Leyla Yunus, a social activist and the leader of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, and her husband Arifov Yunus, a historian, were prevented from leaving Azerbaijan by being detained at the airport. In connection with Ms and Mr Yunus’ support for building peaceful relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan they were put to trial for high treason. In July 2014 Leyla Yunus and Arif Yunus were arrested. During the arrest the activists were charged with high treason, embezzlement of funds, tax evasion and illegal business activity. The charge against Mr Yunus included high treason and embezzlement of funds.
Several days ago Rasul Jafarov, a social activist, organiser of the “Sing for Democracy” campaign held in connection with the Eurovision Song Contest hosted in Baku in 2012, and leader of the Legal Protection and Awareness Society, was denied the right to leave the country. It was only at an airport, when he tried to board a flight to Tbilisi, that he found out about a travel ban issued against him on 25 July 2014. Both Mr Jafarov’s and Ms Yunus’s organisations are partner organisations for HFHR’s projects carried out in Azerbaijan.
Responding to the above incidents, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take an international intervention.
