{"id":1529,"date":"2015-06-15T12:41:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T12:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1529"},"modified":"2015-06-16T12:45:53","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T12:45:53","slug":"unwelcome-to-azerbaijan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1529","title":{"rendered":"Unwelcome to Azerbaijan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By NURGUL NOVRUZ*
\nInstitute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)<\/em>
\n
\nHosting image-boosting European Games while shutting down human rights criticism hasn’t worked, if the aim was positive headlines.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Days before the fanfare of the European Games launch on June 12, the authorities in Azerbaijan quietly ordered a key international institution to close its office in Baku.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Despite spending millions on a sports event intended to enhance its image, the Azerbaijani government still managed to make the headlines for barring Guardian journalist Owen Gibson, Amnesty International and others from attending. Its action against the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) a week earlier was just as significant, however, and was the culmination of a protracted campaign to close down criticism<\/a> at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

The OSCE\u2019s Baku office told the Trend news agency that on June 5, the Azerbaijani foreign ministry gave it a month to halt its activities, \u201cwithout any kind of explanation\u201d. Spokesman Shiv Sharma told RFE\/RL that the OSCE was “assessing our options.”<\/p>\n

The OSCE has 57 members including the United States and Canada as well as countries in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Its broad remit includes human rights, media freedom and the democratic process as well as security issue and arms control. Azerbaijan joined in 1992 soon after it became independent, but it has chafed under the OSCE\u2019s scrutiny of civil and political rights.<\/p>\n

Ulvi Hasanli of the NIDA youth movement finds the government\u2019s strategy baffling.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the one hand, they hold the European Games, and on the other they call a halt to the OSCE office in Baku. The Azerbaijani government\u2019s manoeuvring between Russia and Europe is now beyond logical explanation,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fact that the expulsion of international organisations has now got as far as the OSCE shows how serious things are. Azerbaijan is turning into a closed country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elman Fattah, deputy head of the opposition Musavat party, sees the action taken against the OSCE as only the latest of many steps to shut down foreign organisations operating in Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the government decided to restrict registration for NGOs in 2009, it was already clear that it was going down the road of curbing civil society. The process then took off in 2012, and it culminated in the closure of a number of international human rights organisations, the still-unregistered National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute,\u201d he told IWPR. \u201cThe closure of NGOs effectively stifled civil society. Democracy was smothered and it just about doesn\u2019t exist now. Closing the OSCE\u2019s Baku office similarly serves to bolster authoritarianism.\u201d<\/p>\n

As international organisations were forced to shut up shop in Azerbaijan one after another, the local NGOs they worked with and sometimes funded through grants found their accounts frozen as the authorities levelled various charges of wrongdoing. (See Activists Arrested in Azeri Crackdown<\/a> on how this works.) NGO leaders and human rights defenders, together with opposition supporters and critical journalists, have been arrested and jailed in an intensified clampdown that began more than a year ago.<\/p>\n

Avaz Hasanov, head of the Society for Humanitarian Research in Azerbaijan, says the OSCE presence has been in the government\u2019s crosshairs for two years now.<\/p>\n

“In March 2013, the Azerbaijani foreign minister wrote to the OSCE requesting a review of the office\u2019s mandate to give it the status of \u2018project coordinator\u2019,\u201d he said, recalling that the then OSCE chairman-in-office replied that any member state could decide what status a mission office held. \u201cBut it\u2019s obvious that the aim of changing its status was to increase the Azerbaijani government\u2019s control over the organisation\u2019s activities, in this case [to ensure] that the foreign ministry approved all projects which the OSCE\u2019s Baku office was planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving failed to achieve that, the government decided to end the organisation\u2019s operations in country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The foreign ministry has yet to give its reasons for ending the OSCE presence, but the deputy speaker of parliament, Bahar Muradova, who heads the Azerbaijani delegation to the OSCE\u2019s Parliamentary Assembly, told the APA news agency that the OSCE did not need a coordinator in Baku since cooperation could continue via her country\u2019s representative at the grouping\u2019s Vienna headquarters.<\/p>\n

\u201cAzerbaijan\u2019s successes in protecting human rights and security show that there is no need for an OSCE project coordinator\u2019s office,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

WHAT ABOUT KARABAKH MEDIATION?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The OSCE plays a major role in the South Caucasus as the leading international organisation tasked with helping resolve the two-decade-old dispute over Nagorny Karabakh. This is done through the Minsk Group, a diplomatic team co-chaired by the US, France and Russia.<\/p>\n

Muradova took a swipe at the Minsk Group, saying her country had \u201crepeatedly made serious criticisms\u201d of the OSCE\u2019s position. She did not specify what these were.<\/p>\n

The Minsk Group\u2019s efforts to engage Azerbaijan and Armenia in talks, or even talks about talks, have made little headway over the years since a truce in 1994 ended full-scale hostilities. Although a basis for negotiations called the Madrid Principles is on the table, there has not been much progress as Armenian and Azerbaijani visions of what a settlement would look like remain fundamentally different and irreconcilable.<\/p>\n

Azerbaijan and Armenia occasionally express frustration with the Minsk Group\u2019s role, but they generally accept its role as mediator and reserve allegations of undermining the talks process for one another.<\/p>\n

Baku\u2019s decision to effectively expel the OSCE\u2019s local mission has thus caused consternation among those who still hope for a mediated end to the conflict.<\/p>\n

Hasanov thinks the move might reflect Azerbaijan\u2019s annoyance at the lack of progress on Karabakh, but he also argues that it might not be much of a setback to the peace process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no particular link between the OSCE\u2019s Baku office and the Minsk Group,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

* Nurgul Novruz is the pseudonym of an Azerbaijani journalist.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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