{"id":937,"date":"2014-10-28T09:06:51","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T09:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=937"},"modified":"2014-10-28T09:06:51","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T09:06:51","slug":"engaging-or-shaming-azerbaijan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=937","title":{"rendered":"Engaging or shaming Azerbaijan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ALAKBAR RAUFOGLU
\ncontact.az<\/em><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON – Washington debates over responding effectively to Baku\u2019s crackdown on activists<\/p>\n

Washington officials, leading rights campaigners agree that more need to be done to stop Azerbaijan\u2019s escalated pressure on human rights activists and NGOs. Unfortunately, they can\u2019t agree on how…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The topic of the western response to Azerbaijan\u2019s ongoing pressure against rights activists and civil society groups was discussed during the event called \u201cBroader Implications of the Human Rights Crackdown in Azerbaijan\u201d organized by Freedom House and Open Society Foundations in the US capital on October 27, TURAN\u2019s Washington correspondent reports.<\/p>\n

For rights campaigners, such as Gerald Knaus, the founder of the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based think-tank working on European enlargement, the method of \u201cnaming and shaming\u201d gross violators of basic human rights in Azerbaijan would provide the victims a voice and solidarity with the international community.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime to start looking at the tools [that the US has] on hands, such as implementing Magnitsky-style sanctions against Azerbaijan, as the country now has more political prisoners than even Russia and Belarus,\u201c one of the speakers emphasized\u2026<\/p>\n

The event was announced to be \u201coff the record\u201d for the public, while only one of the speakers agreed to be quoted.<\/p>\n

Knaus, author of the report Caviar Diplomacy, which outlines the ways that Azerbaijan has sought to undermine the Council of Europe, added that the West should be \u201cprecise\u201d in its strategic: The Azeri government and their supporters in Strasbourg, London, and other European capitals should be \u201cashamed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus he said, the Baku officials have been \u201cextremelysuccessful\u201d \u2013 through their caviar diplomacy and oil money \u2013 to \u201cbuy\u201d supporters from western democracies, while targeting at home both domestic and foreign NGOs, placing procedural hurdles that prevent them from working, launching administrative and criminal investigations, and imprisoning or forcing into hiding or exile many outstanding civil society activists and journalists.<\/p>\n

Rights activists such as Leyla Yunus, Rasul Jafarov, who stand for the many defending basic human rights values in the country, are themselves subject to repression and imprisonment for doing so. They got arrested right after they released a comprehensive list of political prisoners in the country, which included more than 100 names.<\/p>\n

All these, he added, happen at the time when Azerbaijan chairs Council of Europe\u2019s decision-making body, while abusing its chairmanship \u201calmost every week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe visa bans should be issued for [Azeri] human rights violators, as long as all the 100 political prisoners aren’t released,\u201d he emphasized, adding that the silence by the most respected human rights institution on the continent became the shield behind which the Azerbaijani regime is hiding its repression by arresting \u201canyone that writes anything critical.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her remarks, a panelist representing US government policy in Azerbaijan, laid out Washington\u2019s vision of \u201cengagement, not isolation\u201d, as the way forward.<\/p>\n

The US, she said, is \u201cin a dialog with Azerbaijan,\u201darguing that human rights is being discussed among other topics, such as security and energy cooperation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe share Azerbaijan’s desire to have atable, secure and prosperous future,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Knaus in his turn, , criticized the western governments\u2019 cheering up to Azeri government\u2019s latest release of four political prisoners, while \u201carresting two more and pretending that system is working.\u201d \u201cIf we keep welcoming these, that means we\u2019re part of the game,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the speakers agreed that the west shouldn\u2019t compromise its human rights principles because of Azerbaijan geo-strategic position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ALAKBAR RAUFOGLU contact.az WASHINGTON – Washington debates over responding effectively to Baku\u2019s crackdown on activists Washington officials, leading rights campaigners agree that more need [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-azerbaijan","category-azerbaijan-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":939,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions\/939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}