8 Oct 2013 | Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan News, News and features
Looking forward to another election win. (Photo: PanArmenian / Demotix)
Tomorrow, on 9 October, Azerbaijan will hold a presidential election, with incumbent President Ilham Aliyev seeking a third term in office. Although the government and its supporters have been working hard to promote a positive image of Azerbaijan abroad, at home, they continue to crack down on citizens’ ability to exercise their basic rights and fundamental freedoms, in an apparent effort to silence all voices of criticism and dissent.
Despite superficial efforts to make the election look like a serious competition – for example, by registering a staggering 10 candidates – there is not an even playing field for all candidates. The only candidate widely agreed to be independent, united opposition candidate Jamil Hasanli, is fighting an uphill battle with limited resources against a powerful incumbent with the full resources of an oil-rich state behind him.
Below, I examine five of the main underlying issues presenting challenges to the fair and free conduct of this election, unsavoury truths that the authorities would rather not be included in reporting on this election. As a result of these and other issues, regardless of what now happens on election day, the chances of a democratic election have effectively been eliminated. The underlying climate has simply not allowed for a fair competition.
1. There are 142 people locked up for political reasons in Azerbaijan
At a press conference in Brussels in June, President Aliyev stated: “None of my political opponents is in prison. There are no political prisoners in Azerbaijan”. These claims simply are not true. A new list from the Baku-based Human Rights Club outlines 142 current cases of politically motivated detention and imprisonment in Azerbaijan. These include journalists, bloggers, human rights defenders, civic and political activists, religious followers, and ordinary citizens, many of whom were targeted for exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association.
One of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners is the Republican Alternative (REAL) movement’s would-be presidential candidate, Ilgar Mammadov, who has been detained since February. After visiting the region of Ismayilli to investigate on-going protests, he was then charged with inciting violent protest, and faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted. Although REAL was able to gather the more than 40,000 signatures required to register a presidential candidate, the Central Election Commission declared some of the signatures invalid and refused to register Mammadov’s candidacy.
2. Aliyev has gotten far greater media coverage in the country than any of his opponents
Azerbaijan’s state-controlled broadcast media rarely shows opposition figures. Out of Azerbaijan’s nine national television stations, three are directly owned by the state, five are privately owned but controlled by the state, and the public service broadcaster, Ictimai, is failing to fulfil its role as a public service broadcaster as it does not provide balanced and varied programming. In contrast to the hours of television coverage incumbent President Aliyev receives every day throughout the year, the other presidential candidates have received only 18 minutes of airtime each week for the three weeks of the campaign period.
Three independent media outlets which have been relegated to the Internet since a 2009 ban took them off the air – the Azerbaijani services of the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Voice of America – have been accused by the Central Election Commission of being in “propaganda mode” during the campaign period – presumably for daring to cover the opposition’s campaign activities, and not just the president’s.
3. The opposition is challenging Aliyev’s right to run for a third term
This is perhaps the most significant factor making this election stand out from previous elections in Azerbaijan, and may account for the unprecedented crackdown in the run-up to the election: the opposition claims that Aliyev does not have the constitutional right to run for a third term in office. The united opposition candidate, Jamil Hasanli, has filed a legal appeal in this regard, which will be examined by the Baku Court of Appeals today.
What is the basis of this appeal? When Aliyev came to power in 2003, and when he was re-elected in 2008, there was a two-term limit on the Azerbaijani presidency. This limit was removed through a Constitutional referendum in 2009. Hasanli and his supporters argue, however, that the changes do not apply retroactively to Aliyev, but should apply instead to his successor, meaning he does not have the right to run for a third term.
Further, University of Sydney Professor Wojciech Sadurski issued a legal opinion arguing that Azerbaijan’s removal of the term limitation was done in an undemocratic manner, contrary to the principles of openness and transparency. Sadurski considered this action to be a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Azerbaijan is party.
4. Azerbaijan has not had a fair and free election since Aliyev came to power
Including the election that brought Ilham Aliyev to power in 2003, Azerbaijan has held two presidential elections and two parliamentary elections in the past 10 years. All fell far short of meeting international standards for democratic elections, largely due to restrictions of freedom of expression and assembly in the pre-election period, resulting in a lack of robust competition and vibrant political discourse.
The Azerbaijani government seems intent on repeating its past mistakes with this election. The most recent interim report issued by the OSCE/ODIHR’s election observation mission highlighted similar problems to previous election periods, noting that the campaign period “has been marred by some reported incidents of intimidation of family members of political figures.” The report also concludes that “the campaign has lacked substantive debate and has focused on personality rather than concrete political platform” and states “the incumbent President received a much greater amount of coverage in news programmes on television in comparison to other political actors.”
5. Azerbaijan is failing to fulfil its human rights obligations with all major international bodies
The fact that Azerbaijan is failing to fulfil its human rights obligations with the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and the United Nations (UN), and its human rights agreements with the European Union, is the elephant in the room, both in the context of this election and in broader international relations with Azerbaijan.
The pattern of systematic and widespread violations of human rights by the Azerbaijani authorities is well documented. Just last week, three UN special mandates, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, and the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner all spoke out with concerns related to human rights violations in the pre-election period.
Despite this knowledge, the political leadership of these bodies and their member states remain reluctant to seriously address these shortcomings. As a result, the Azerbaijani authorities continue to act with impunity, certain that their failure to implement their human rights commitments will not result in serious consequences for other areas of their bilateral and multilateral relations. How then can they be expected to behave differently in this election period?
But rather than write off this election – as some international media outlets have already done, pre-emptively declaring another victory for Aliyev – the international community must take note of what happens and take a stand. International observers must report accurately and fully on the election, and the government must be held accountable for shortcomings through the full political weight of the organizations behind the reports and their individual member states. Azerbaijan cannot continue to be treated as a privileged member of the international democratic community without the credentials to back it up.
And most importantly, the international community must sustain attention to Azerbaijan well beyond the election period. Local journalists, human rights defenders, and activists fear a post-election crackdown even harsher than what occurred in the run-up to the election. If these remaining few critical voices are successfully silenced, then many more elections in Azerbaijan will follow suit as foregone conclusions.
This article was originally published on 8 Oct 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
8 Oct 2013 | News and features, Politics and Society, The climate crisis, United Kingdom, United States
(Photo Illustration: Shutterstock)
The continuing advance of climate science, as reflected in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recently released Fifth Assessment Report, points ever more strongly to the need for an expedited phase-out of carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Only a fundamental transformation of the current energy system during the coming decades may make it possible to avert disastrous impacts of global climatic disruption.
Carrying out such a transformation would be a political, economic, and technological challenge under the best of circumstances. But it is made especially difficult by corporate and ideologically driven opposition — most notably, by pressure from fossil fuel production interests to protect their strategic position and set the terms for government policymaking.
The United States and Canada exemplify the power of the dominant energy interests. The governments of both countries strongly support the expansion of domestic fossil energy extraction, production, and export. But the collision between climate science and energy politics, and threats to freedom of communication, are playing out differently in the two countries.
With the Harper government in Canada, for years we have witnessed an ongoing repression of climate and environmental science communication by government scientists, along with systematic cutbacks of environmental research and data collection. “Harper’s attack on science: No science, no evidence, no truth, no democracy“, an excellent review and discussion in the May 2013 issue of the Canadian journal Academic Matters, itemized a series of moves by the Harper government to control or prevent the free flow of scientific information across Canada, particularly when that information highlights the undesirable consequences of industrial development. The free flow of information is controlled in two ways: through the muzzling of scientists who might communicate scientific information, and through the elimination of research programs that might participate in the creation of scientific information or evidence.
It appears that the issues on which government scientists are subjected to the tightest political control of communications include climate change, the Alberta tar sands, the oil and gas industry, and Arctic wildlife. In other words, issues on which free communication of scientific evidence could pose problems for corporate energy development interests.
The situation in Canada has driven government scientists to hold public protest rallies twice in the last year. In September, rallies in major city centers and on university campuses were held across the country.
“It isn’t the way science is supposed to be. It’s not the way science used to be, the way I remember it in the federal government,” IPCC vice-chair and retired Environment Canada scientist John Stone told The Guardian.
So the Harper government can be said to be following in the footsteps — even surpassing — the record of the former Bush-Cheney administration in the U.S., whose alignment with energy industry interests led them to misrepresent climate science intelligence and impede forthright communication by federal climate scientists.
In the U.S., the Obama administration presents a complex picture that differs from Canada in significant ways, but also suggests the problematic nature of government support for expanded fossil energy extraction and production. The administration appears susceptible to industry pressure aimed at playing down the environmental and societal consequences of fossil energy resource extraction and use.
After several years of near-silence on climate change at the highest levels of U.S. political leadership, in June President Obama finally gave a major public address on climate change (the first by an American president) and laid out a multifaceted Climate Action Plan. The plan focuses on actions that can be taken by the White House and Executive Branch in the absence of action by a Congress that is tied in knots, largely subservient to corporate energy interests, and with much of the Republican Party aligned with the global warming denial machine.
Under Obama, we see a more straightforward acknowledgement of climate science and assessments by the most credible experts, and more straightforward communication on climate by federal research agencies. The forthcoming National Climate Assessment, scheduled for release next spring, will address the implications of climatic disruption for the U.S., across geographical regions and socioeconomic and resource sectors (public health, water resources, food production, coastal zones, and so forth). The importance of national assessments for public discourse was underscored when the Bush administration, in collusion with nongovernmental global warming denialists, suppressed official use of and references to the first National Climate Assessment, which had been completed in 2000.
Yet, despite the numerous constructive action items in Obama’s Climate Action Plan, there appears to be a contradiction at the heart of Obama’s policy, as indicated by the administration’s adoption of what they call an ‘all of the above’ approach to energy development. Obama points to increased U.S. fossil energy extraction as a major accomplishment. U.S. energy development includes ‘mountaintop removal’ coal mining in Appalachia, large-scale coal strip-mining on public lands in the West, and increased coal exports; deepwater drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, even in the wake of the BP oil blowout disaster in 2010, and quite possibly drilling in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska; and a dramatic increase during the past five years in natural gas production using directional drilling technology and hydraulic fracturing of shale deposits that cover a number of large areas across the country.
Natural gas from ‘fracking’ appears to be an essential component of the administration’s climate policy, i.e., relying on the ongoing trend of substitution of natural gas for coal in power plants in order to meet a 2020 goal for reducing U.S. carbon emissions. The Department of the Interior has proposed to open 600 million acres of public land to fracking. But fracking is controversial, raising concerns about contamination of drinking water in affected areas by chemicals used in fracking, large-scale use of water in drilling, air pollution, leaking methane greenhouse gas emissions, and industrial degradation of rural landscapes. Environmental groups have protested at the White House, calling for a moratorium on fracking on public lands.
There are sIgns that the administration may be allowing political pressure from the natural gas industry to compromise investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency into fracking contamination incidents. The EPA has pulled back from several high-profile investigations in a manner that raises questions about whether this indicates a pattern of failure to act on scientific evidence. When the EPA’s scientists found evidence that fracking was contaminating water supplies, the EPA stopped or slowed down their work in in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming.
“Not only does this pattern of behavior leave impacted residents in the lurch, but it raises important questions as to whether the agency is caving to pressure from industry, antagonistic members of Congress and/or other outside sources,” Kate Sinding at the Natural Resources Defense Council notes. “This trend also calls into serious question the agency’s commitment to conducting an impartial, comprehensive assessment of the risks fracking presents to drinking water—a first-of-its-kind study that is now in its fourth year, with initial results now promised in 2014.” The EPA recently announced that it has delayed the expected final date of this study until 2016 — Obama’s eighth and final year in office. Meanwhile, industry continues to create a fait accompli of radically expanded fracking operations.
Obama has adopted a forward-looking position on climate change. But his ‘all of the above’ energy policy, and particularly his full-speed-ahead support for shale gas fracking, raises the question of whether politics is impeding freedom of communication by government experts — and whether the EPA is thereby being impeded in doing its job of protecting the public against the environmental dangers of fossil fuel development.
This article was originally published on 8 Oct 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
8 Oct 2013 | Campaigns, Media Freedom
In response to reports that the UK newspaper industry’s Royal Charter proposal will be rejected tomorrow, Index on Censorship Chief Executive Kirsty Hughes said today:
Unconfirmed reports that the Privy Council will reject the newspaper industry’s royal charter proposal should not mean that the political party proposal for a regulator will be waved through. A truly independent self regulator should not be created by politicians. Now is the time to open transparent discussions with the aim of creating genuine independent self-regulation that will ensure the protection of free speech in the UK.”
Since the start of the Leveson Inquiry into UK press standards, Index has warned that there should be no political interference in determining the characteristics or establishment of a press regulator. Establishing press regulation by Royal Charter could allow politicians to meddle in press regulation and threaten media freedom in the UK.
8 Oct 2013 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features
A poster from Marika Schmiedt’s exhibition Thoughts Are Free
The Hungarian Ambassador to Austria has called for the cancellation of a “racist” and “anti-Hungarian” art exhibition which opened yesterday in the Austrian city of Linz.
Thoughts Are Free, the exhibition by Roma artist Marika Schmiedt, features posters highlighting the plight of Roma people in Europe today. Several pieces draw parallels between the Nazis and Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, whose views on the country’s Roma population have been well documented. In one poster, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from the Fidesz party is pictured on the label of “Natural Smoked Gypsy Cooked Salami” next to a Jobbik logo.
Ambassador Vince Szalay-Bobrovniczky labelled the exhibition: “a cheap provocation, openly racist and hostile against Hungary, and in violation of European values and the dignity of minorities, especially the Roma,” reported the Hungarian news agency MTI.
The Ambassador also took issue with it being located in Linz City Hall, stating that that the “socialist Linz city administration” will not back out of the “discrimination filled” project due to the artist’s political and ideological ties.
He contacted both Mayor Franz Dobuschs and Austrian President Heinz Fischer demanding that the exhibition be cancelled.
Image Marika Schmiedt
Image Marika Schmiedt
Linz City Hall has also been inundated with hundreds of emails from angry Hungarians, seemingly led by the Salzburg Hungarian Club, which, in May, invited Jobbik politician Tamás Sneider to speak.
This is not the first time Thoughts Are Free has caused controversy. When the posters were first exhibited at a construction site fence in Linz last November, the Austrian police removed them following complaints lodged by Hungarians.
Mayor Dobuschs however, did not budge: “Criticism and escalation is a legitimate method in a democracy,” he said in a reply to Szalay-Bobrovniczky. “We therefore stand by the artist who will receive a public forum at City Hall”.
The exhibition opening took place yesterday as planned, with police protection. Schmiedt told Index it was very well attended.
She added: “Maybe I might also dedicate a graphic to the ambassador?”
