The Economist
An oil-rich autocracy tries to polish its image ahead of a Washington summit
THE amnesty that Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s authoritarian president, declared for the holiday of Novruz on March 17th was a rare piece of good news for Azerbaijan’s civil-society activists. Of the 148 people pardoned, 14 were political prisoners, according to local watchdog groups. Among the close-knit dissidents in Baku, the capital, speculation was rife over the reason for the pardons. Were they a result of international pressure? Perhaps the president wanted to clean up his record before a planned visit to Washington on March 31st? Foreign supporters hope it was their advocacy that did the trick. But local observers chalk it up to the low price of oil, Azerbaijan’s chief export. Mr Aliyev, they think, is running short of the cash he normally uses to buy off foreign critics through “caviar diplomacy”, and needed to find a substitute.
The day after the announcement, the newly released gathered with friends and fellow activists. Anar Mammadli, a prominent elections monitor imprisoned for over two years, celebrated in his parents’ top-floor apartment along with family members, reporters and former political prisoners. Rasul Jafarov, a human-rights lawyer jailed for a year and eight months, spent the day at a bakery owned by his uncle; family and friends crowded around the bread oven as the telephone rang off the hook. At other spots around Baku, well-wishers celebrated the freedom of Tofiq Yaqublu, a columnist and vice-president of the Musavat Party, and the conditional release of Rauf Mirkadirov, a journalist jailed for “espionage” after being deported from Turkey two years ago.
Mr Mammadli, the head of a Baku-based election-monitoring centre whose reports were widely used by international observers, was happy to be free but pessimistic about resuming his activities. “How can I carry on the work”, he asked, “when most of our activists emigrated or switched to more secure jobs, when the work of NGOs is curtailed by law and foreign funding is practically outlawed?” Mr Jafarov, the 31-year-old founder of Azerbaijan’s Human Rights Club, was more upbeat. He plans to stage a human-rights event during the Formula 1 races scheduled to take place in Baku on 17th-19th June. Just hours before his release, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg ruled that his detention was unlawful and ordered Azerbaijan to pay him €32,000 ($36,000) in compensation.
For the families of three dissidents who were not included in the amnesty, it was a wrenching day. The wife and daughter of Ilgar Mammadov, the leader of the opposition REAL political movement, waited in vain for him to be allowed his twice-weekly call home. In another part of the city, the mother and sister (pictured below) of Khadija Ismayilova, an investigative journalist, were preparing food to bring when they visit her in prison. Ms Ismayilova, who had investigated the wealth of President Aliyev’s family members, was abruptly accused of embezzlement and abuse of power last year, and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. Intigam Aliyev, a lawyer who defended most of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners before becoming one himself in 2014, was also left off the amnesty list. His son Necmin plans to travel abroad to keep his father’s imprisonment on the agenda.
None of the still-imprisoned dissidents’ families showed any sign of giving up. Mr Mammadov’s wife thinks the government wants to break her husband’s morale by forcing him to ask for a pardon. She does not think he will; her only fear is that they may decide to “eliminate him physically”. The ECHR ruled in May 2014 that Mr Mammadov’s imprisonment was unlawful. It is scheduled to rule on the cases of Intigam Aliyev and Ms Ismailova soon, and will undoubtedly find their detentions illegal, too. “My child has done nothing wrong,” says Elmira Ismailova, Khadija’s mother. She is in touch with her daughter’s lawyer, Amal Clooney, and has become Facebook friends with her journalistic colleagues. Baku’s activists may not be able to get all of their colleagues released. But they are not backing down, either.
Baku’s best may still be behind bars. But they are not backing down: Intigam Aliyev continues from his cell to work as a defense lawyer, and Ilgar Mammadov keeps a blog. Khadija Ismayilova, meanwhile, has kept busy singing opera arias and translating “Children of the Jacaranda Tree”, by Sahar Delijani, into Azeri.