From top left: Arif Yunus, Rasul Jafarov, Leyla Yunus, Khadija Ismayilova, Intigam Aliyev and Anar Mammadli – some of the government critics jailed on trumped up charges in Azerbaijan
On the eve of the inaugural European Games, taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, activists from Amnesty International and Platform have been banned from entering the country. Both organisations have been highly critical of President Ilham Aliyev’s government, and its continuing targeting, jailing and prosecution of activists and journalists. Amnesty was set to present its findings on the state of human rights in Azerbaijan at an event in the capital on 10 June.
Emma Hughes of London-based NGO Platform was travelling to Baku on Tuesday afternoon with a press accreditation. After landing she was taken off the plane by security for questioning, where she was told she was on a “red list”. Her passport was taken away and she was held overnight at the airport before being deported. CCTV images of Hughes in detention surfaced in Azerbaijani media on Tuesday.
Platform has been campaigning against British oil company BP’s involvement in the oil rich former Soviet state. Platform’s new book — All that Glitters — Sport, BP and Repression — written by Hughes, will be released on 12 June, the opening day of the games.
“I’m being detained on the orders of the BP-Aliyev regime. I may get deported, but over 100 political prisoners in Azerbaijan face years in jail until the oil-funded regime falls. Civil society has been stamped on hard in Baku. Journalists, lawyers, academics, writers and activists have all found themselves behind bars. And yet the Oil Games carry on regardless. The future of this country is imprisoned, yet BP still work hand in hand with this regime,” Hughes said from Baku airport before her deportation.
Amnesty was set to present findings from a research trip they undertook in March at the briefing Azerbaijan: the Repression Games, with four staff members preparing to travel to Baku on the morning of 10 June. Amnesty was informed on Tuesday 9 June, via the Azerbaijani embassy in London, that “Azerbaijan is not in a position to welcome the Amnesty mission to Baku at the present time”, and suggested to postpone the trip until after the games.
Naomi Westland, who works on issues around sports and human rights at Amnesty, was one of the staff members hoping to present in Baku. Speaking from Tiblisi, Georgia, she said everything from visas and plane tickets; to venues, speakers and guests for the briefing had been arranged before the last-minute government U-turn.
“Amnesty being barred proves all the criticism levelled at Azerbaijan has been absolutely right. There has been an intense crackdown on human rights ahead of the European Games. This proves the Azerbaijani authorities want to create a criticism free zone while the world’s media is in attendance. The games are a massive PR exercise to present Azerbaijan as a modern, dynamic, progressive state. Behind the scenes, the reverse is the case. Amnesty has become victims of the repression meted out in Azerbaijan,” Westland told Index.
The banning of Platform and Amnesty comes after a Human Rights Watch researcher, Giorgi Gogia, was denied entry and detained in March at Baku airport for 30 hours, before being deported.
The human rights situation in Azerbaijan has deteriorated in the months leading up to the games. Since last summer, the country’s most prominent critical voices — including investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, human rights activists Leyla and Arif Yunus, human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev and pro-democracy campaigner Rasul Jafarov — have been jailed on charges widely dismissed as trumped up and politically motivated. Critics believe the government of President Ilham Aliyev is using the games as and international image laundering exercise.
Politicians, high-level Olympic officials and athletes have in recent weeks faced mounting pressure to use the games to take a stand on the crackdown. The campaigning group Sports for Rights — initiated by Jafarov before his arrest — has called on European leaders to make their attendance of the games conditioned on the release of political prisoners, while Lord Coe, chairman of the British Olympic Association, has been urged to use the games to show support for fundamental rights and freedoms in Azerbaijan. Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner Nils Muižnieks has encouraged games participants to user their platforms to speak out about human rights situation.
Human rights groups hijacked a hashtag used to promote a contest to win tickets to the opening ceremony of the Baku European Games (Photo: Amnesty International)
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has high hopes for the European Games; the brand new, European Olympic Committee-backed regional sporting event which kicks off Friday 12 June in Baku. According to the organising committee BEGOC, Baku 2015 — with an estimated price tag of some £5.4 billion — will “showcase Azerbaijan as a vibrant and modern European nation of great achievement”. But it seems the event is not down to Azerbaijani achievements alone: from promotions to operations, foreign manpower has played a significant role in making Baku 2015 a reality.
Brit Simon Clegg, former chief executive of the British Olympic Association and Ipswich Town football club, is the CEO of the games. He took over when American Jim Scherr, who has previously overseen US Olympic teams, stepped down in 2014. Dimitris Papaioannou, the Greek artistic director of the opening ceremony of the 2004 Athens Olympics, will reprise this role in Baku. Meanwhile, British marketing firm 1000heads was behind a social media competition to give away tickets to the show. James Hadley, Cirque du Soleil’s senior artistic director, will take the reins of the closing ceremony, with the help of creative director Libby Hyland, who previously worked on the Pan American Games. The promo video was directed by American Joel Peissig, signed to the production company of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ridley Scott. UK/US-based major events company Broadstone is taking care of day-to-day business on the ground, from transport, to human resources, to security. And the list goes on.
Sporting stars have also made their mark even before the start of the games. “Baku 2015” has for months been emblazoned on the shirts of Spanish football giants Atletico Madrid. A number of participants — from British taekwondo athlete Jade Jones, to French rhythmic gymnast Kseniya Moustafaeva, to Serbia’s 3×3 basketball team of Dušan Domović Bulut, Marko Savic, Marko Zdero and Dejan Majstorovic — have been named international athlete ambassadors.
While most contemporary mega sporting events are, to an extent, multinational operations, the situation in Azerbaijan follows a familiar pattern. The oil rich country — ruled by President Aliyev since 2003, when he took over from his father Heydar — has for some time relied on foreign input in its ongoing international rebranding project. Meanwhile, the government has been cracking down on human rights at home.
Take for instance the modernisation and beautification of downtown Baku. The flame towers dominating the skyline were designed by global architecture firm HOK. The in-demand London-based design studio Blue Sky Hospitality has worked on over a dozen restaurants in the city over the past five years. This includes at least five in Port Baku, dubbed the city’s “premier luxury address” by the glossy, internationally distributed magazine edited by the president’s daughter Leyla Aliyeva. Azerbaijan has also worked with foreign public relations companies, such as the Berlin-based Consultum Communications and global firm APCO, with headquarters in Washington. The government even hired former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as an advisor in 2014. According to independent news site Contact.az, the government in 2011 allocated AZN 30,000,000 (£18.7 million) in the state budget to promoting Azerbaijan, though this figure is thought to be an underestimate.
Critics believe the government, with the help of overt foreign PR and the prestige of working with well-known international names, is presenting a sanitised version of Azerbaijan to the world, to whitewash its poor rights record. In other words: the government targets those challenging its representation of Azerbaijan, and the PR blitz in turn masks the crackdown. “We are facing a huge PR and propaganda machine from Azerbaijan supported by oil companies in the west,” Azerbaijani journalist Emin Milli said at an expert panel debate ahead of the games.
“The Aliyev government has used the revenues of the oil and gas fields to finance a stream of grandiose projects — from the Heydar Aliyev Airport, to the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre and the European Games. In the realisation of these projects it has hired a number of international corporations. British companies are particularly heavily involved, for example in constructing the airport, designing the centre, and co-ordinating and branding the games,” said James Marriott from the London-based NGO Platform.
Or, as Simon Clegg told The Independent in 2014, British companies “are absolutely at the forefront of winning contracts over here [Azerbaijan] for the successful delivery of the games”.
Platform’s campaigning is focused around BP, the British oil company which has long worked in Azerbaijan and is one of the lead sponsors of the games. “In binding itself so closely to these foreign corporations the Aliyev government is building the international political support that it recognises is so vital, especially as it tries to counter the growing dissent in Azerbaijan,” added Marriott.
Rebecca Vincent coordinates the Sport for Rights campaign, which has worked to raise awareness around the crackdown on government critics in the lead-up to the games. The movement was initiated by Rasul Jafarov before his arrest. Those wanting to raise human rights issues are “fighting this massive army of very well paid PR firms throughout Europe,” said Vincent.
“The Azerbaijani government’s PR has been quite effective. They have been successful in promoting Azerbaijan as this modern, glamorous country. We’re working very hard to show that there is more to the story; that there is a more sinister side,” she added.
According to Azerbaijani journalist Arzu Geybulla, reaction from her countrymen and women to their government’s strategy has been mixed, and dependent on how much information they have. Some are simply preoccupied with putting food on the table and are unaware of the extent of foreign involvement; others, often young and western-educated, know what’s going on, but are reluctant to challenge the status quo directly.
She categorises foreign companies and individuals working in Azerbaijan in a similar way. Some, she says, know nothing about Azerbaijan and are just there to take the opportunity given to them. Others have limited understanding of the state of human rights in the country, and “care very little about imprisoned journalists or beaten bloggers”. The final group, where she places the EOC, is fully aware of situation on the ground, “and yet they’re saying that athletes are coming there to compete, and the crackdown shouldn’t prevent a sports competition taking place”.
Index queried a number of individuals and firms associated with the games.
One person was willing to speak on the condition of anonymity. While stressing that the presence of international staff and companies is business as usual for large sporting events, the source dubbed the situation at the Baku Games “a little bit weird”, especially noting the “big British connection”.
The person said they didn’t know much about Azerbaijan or its political climate when taking on the job, but spoke of their shock upon arriving in the capital. “Baku is like Monaco crashing into Tijuana … it’s one giant set,” they said, dubbing it a city of facades. “It seemed pretty desperate.” Though the source said they would consider speaking out about the situation, they worried about the impact it might have on the locals they worked with.
1000heads, the London-based company behind #HelloBaku (a social media competition which was hijacked by activists to draw attention to human rights and free speech violations in Azerbaijan), told Index they are no longer involved in the games.
As for athlete ambassador Jade Jones, she says she is focusing purely on the sporting side: “We go to different places. Some places are better than others. I’m just going there to do my job and perform.”
Clegg, meanwhile, has stood firm when pressed on human rights concerns: “Look where they’ve come from – decades of Soviet rule and oppression,” he told The Guardian. “You don’t go from there to there overnight. If you do, you end up with chaos and civil disorder.”
This echoes the government narrative, which describes of a country that may not be perfect, but that is on the right track. “Azerbaijan, as a young democracy and dynamically developing country, which demonstrated goodwill in hosting the first Baku Games, deserves appreciation and understanding, too,” a foreign ministry spokesperson told the BBC.
But with the ongoing jailing and judicial harassment of vocal critics of the government being widely labelled an unprecedented crackdown, many disagree with this interpretation. Council of Europe human rights commissioner Nils Muižnieks co-wrote a recent op-ed arguing that human rights cannot be ignored during the games, and encouraging athletes going to Baku to use their platform to speak out. Some seem to have already taken him up on this: German athletes last week called for the release of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners. “Although I do not usually address directly private companies, I can say that I would like to see the business field taking into more consideration human rights related issues which may arise from its activities,” Muižnieks told Index.
On the day of the opening ceremony, Jafarov will be going back to court. With this, Rebecca Vincent says the government has the opportunity to send a message more powerful than the sure to be spectacular show taking place in Baku National Stadium. “I’d remind the Azerbaijani authorities that the best PR would be to stop the human rights crackdown and release the political prisoners,” she said.
“Rasul’s release would be a step in the right direction.”
Editorial cartoon on the Baku European Games From Meydan TV (Image: Meydan TV)
Join Index on Censorship, Sport for Rights, Amnesty International UK, Article 19 and Platform for a demonstration in London calling for an end to the human rights crackdown in Azerbaijan, and the release of the country’s jailed journalists and human rights defenders. This will be part of a series of parallel protests across Europe to mark the opening ceremony of the inaugural European Games. The games will be hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan from 12-28 June.
The demonstration will take place from 10 to 11 am in front of the Azerbaijani Embassy at 4 Kensington Court, London, W8 5DL. Some participants will be coming from an earlier protest, organised by Platform, in front of BP, a sponsor of the European Games.
For more information on the human rights situation in Azerbaijan in the run-up to the European Games, check out Sport for Rights’ Facebook page and Twitter feed.
When: Friday 12 June, 10-11 am Where: Embassy of Azerbaijan, London (map)
A Baku district court today extended the detention of Khadija Ismayilova by an additional three months, until 24 August.
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Khadija Ismayilova, one of Azerbaijan’s most celebrated investigative journalists, today had her appeal over a criminal libel conviction postponed indefinitely.
In February Ismayilova was fined 2,500 manat (£1,500) for defamation of former opposition leader Elman Hasanov. The decision to postpone her appeal comes as she enters her six month in pretrial detention over a number of separate charges, dismissed as spurious and trumped up by international human rights organisations.
“The continued judicial harassment of Khadija Ismayilova by Azerbaijani authorities is cruel and unjust,” said Index CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “As Azerbaijan prepares to host this summer’s inaugural European Games, it is worth remembering that the treatment of Ismayilova flies in the face of the principles of press freedom and human dignity enshrined in the Olympic Charter.”
Ismayilova was arrested on 5 December on charges of inciting suicide and given two months in pretrial detention, which has since been extended twice, last in early March. The initial charge has in recent weeks been further discredited by the backtracking of the accuser, Tural Mustafayev.
In April Mustafayev said in a radio interview that he no longer stands by the letter he wrote in November 2014, accusing Ismayilova of inciting him to suicide, and that he had written to the head public prosecutor to retract his complaint. He says he had first tried in December to withdraw the complaint. Then in May, he accused the city prosecutor’s office in Baku of using his suicide attempt as an opportunity to target Ismayilova.
“I was forced to write the letter. They blackmailed me. They said they will release secret camera recordings of my apartment if I didn’t comply,” he said in a video posted online, reports Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Ismayilova was handed down further charges following her arrest. According to her lawyer, she also stands accused of embezzlement, illegal business, tax evasion and abuse of power. Together, the charges carry a possible sentence of 12 years.
Ismayilova has on a number of occasions taken on President Ilham Aliyev and those close to him through her reporting, and has faced harassment and smear campaigns directly linked to her work. Among other things, ahead of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, she uncovered how the Aliyev family profited from the building of the Baku concert hall where the final was to be hosted.
“Khadija Ismayilova knows no fear. Again and again she has unearthed and exposed stories that have cast a harsh light on widespread corruption and self-dealing at the highest levels of the Azeri government,” said PEN Executive Director Suzanne Nossel.
