One Day Petrodollars will Cease Saving Azerbaijan

• 04.08.2015, 23:43
• Greta Avetisyan
•  Region,  "Insight" Analytical Center ,  World,  Analytics

Violations of human rights and restrictions on freedom of expression have always and as the tendency shows, will remain one of the biggest problems of Azerbaijan, of course, if it is perceived by the latter as a problem. Azerbaijan tries to create an image of a powerful country, which does not have any problem, or it can solve its problems with oil and petrodollars. Actually, partially it has succeeded in what it has thought.

The country is considered to be a highly corrupted one.  According to the recent report of Freedom House the level of corruption in Azerbaijan is estimated 6 (according to Freedom House, 1 means least corrupted and 7 – the most corrupted). These are not just numbers. If one looks at the income of the country only from oil export and the GDP of the country, it becomes quite obvious that these numbers are not compatible. The other problem which I already mentioned – human rights violations, restrictions on freedom of expression are directly derived from the level of corruption of the country, the totalitarian regime and the Aliyev clan dominance in Azerbaijan. Among those human right activists, lawyers, journalists that are the thinking layer of the Azerbaijani society, those who have been more active in their work are already imprisoned. Here also reveals another problem of Azerbaijan – Armenophobia. Several activists, human rights defenders, among them Leyla and Arif Yunus, Rauf Mirkadirov have been arrested because of doing some projects with Armenians and are now charged for treason. One of the reasons of these imprisonments is the aim of the Azerbaijani authorities to silence them, to clean their way from all possible obstacles and to continue their way as they are used to.

On the eve of the European Games that will be held from June 12 to 28 in Baku, Sports and Rights Alliance -  a recently formed coalition including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, FIFPro – World Players’ Union, Football Supporters Europe, Supporters Direct Europe, Terre des Hommes, and Transparency International Germany – has called Azerbaijan "to release unjustly imprisoned journalists and activists," stressing that the European Olympic Committees have a unique opportunity and position to raise all these concerns with the President of Azerbaijan. The statement of the Alliance further on says: "By remaining silent, the European Olympic Committees risk sending a message that it is acceptable for the Azerbaijani government to silence critics while hosting an event that, according to the Olympic Charter, should stand for human dignity and sport at the heart of the harmonious development of society."

Of course, this is more than an objective statement and not only the European Olympic Committees, but also the international community should have long ago taken steps to prevent Azerbaijan go so far with its adventurous activities. The Sport and Rights Alliance even called on the European Olympic Committees to use leverage with Azerbaijan to take three steps before the June 12 opening ceremony – immediately release unjustly imprisoned journalists and human rights activists; end intimidation and prosecution of human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and opposition members; refrain from denial of registration to human rights and pro-democracy groups and amend the law on non-governmental groups. These are steps the implementation of which would surely change a level in Azerbaijan, would make the country opener and closer to democracy. However, to expect that Azerbaijan will take into consideration any advice or even a demand from the European Olympic Committees, is more than unrealistic. This is not the first time that such calls are being addressed to Azerbaijan from different levels, starting from the US President Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to different international human rights organizations. The previous practice has shown that anything that is not binding does not have any real influence on Azerbaijan, except sobering it for some short period of time. That is why the only and the working language with Azerbaijan should be sanctions, which can make Azerbaijan at last understand that its petrodollars cannot always save it, otherwise everything proves just the opposite…