Azerbaijan - July 2023

A peaceful protest by villagers from Soyudlu in north-central Azerbaijan against the expansion of a local mining project, which villagers complained for years had severely damaged local water supplies, was met with overwhelming force by armed riot police on 20 June. Videos spread across the internet and prompted intense media coverage and interest from domestic and international rights advocates. Journalists and lawyers who travelled to Soyudlu were detained, interrogated, and allegedly assaulted by police. In a rare move, President Ilham Aliyev expressed his sympathy with the villagers at a 11 July cabinet meeting and called the local environmental situation “utterly unacceptable”, blaming the local mining company and the environmental ministry. However, Aliyev also praised the police’s conduct, and the town remains largely cut off from the outside world by a police cordon and local residents report a heavy police presence inside the town.

Sources: Eurasianet, International Partnership for Human Rights, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Meydan TV, Abzas Media (Facebook), Azadliq Radiosu

Government pressure on the Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh escalated further in July and has led to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the enclave, with the government once again closing the only road connecting the region to the outside world to International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) humanitarian convoys on 11 July. The ICRC then ceased medical evacuation on 29 July after Azerbaijani border guards arrested Vagif Khachatryan, a 68-year-old patient in critical condition who the ICRC was evacuating to Armenia for medical care. Azerbaijani prosecutors say Khachatryan will stand trial on charges of “genocide” carried out during the First Karabakh War, but the only evidence to support the charges appears to be Khachatryan’s military service. As all Karabakh Armenian men either fought in a war or performed mandatory military service, analysts say that it is unsafe for any men to attempt to leave the blockaded region.

Sources: Radio Azatutyun, Eurasianet, Eurasianet

Azerbaijan’s three major opposition parties face immediate deregistration and dissolution, as each party learned in July its application to comply with a registration law instituted in January 2023 had been denied. Republican Alternative (ReAl), the only opposition party with a seat in parliament, was notified by the Ministry of Justice it would be deregistered on 17 July for inconsistencies in the personal details of its list of members. Musavat and the Popular Front Party (AXCP) received similar notices on 19 July. Although the parties had found little success in Azerbaijan’s stage-managed elections in recent years, both the AXCP and Musavat have maintained national organizational structures and frequently organized large-scale protests and marches.

Source: Eurasianet, European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), Turan.az