Azerbaijan’s civil society crackdown intensifies ahead of COP29

As Baku prepares to host COP29, the largest international climate summit, the Azerbaijani government has ramped up its crackdown on the remaining vestiges of its civil society.

The decision to host COP29 in Azerbaijan, announced in December 2023, has prompted significant concerns about the country’s high corruption index, poor human rights record, unwavering reliance on fossil fuels, and limited plans for emission reductions.

Oil and gas output account for roughly 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports and 60% of the state budget. The state-owned energy company SOCAR, which operates refineries and pipelines, ranks as one of the worst places in the Oil and Gas Benchmark Ranking by the World Benchmarking Alliance over social and climate standards.

Ronald Suny, professor emeritus of history at the University of Michigan and expert on South Caucasian nations, highlighted Azerbaijan’s repressive nature in an interview with Heatmap, a climate news website.

He noted that Azerbaijan is even more authoritarian than the United Arab Emirates, the host of COP28, according to Freedom House’s human rights scale. “Azerbaijan is not even a one-party state,” Suny explained. “It’s a one-person or one-family state.”

In fact, contrary to expectations, President Ilham Aliyev’s government has intensified its crackdown on independent media, civil society, and activists while preparing for this high-profile summit in Baku.

In November 2023, Ulvi Hasanli, executive director of Abzas Media, was arrested on charges of “plotting to smuggle foreign currency into the country.” Following his arrest, police searched the Abzas office and Hasanli’s home, claiming to have found €40,000.

Consequently, a criminal investigation into smuggling was launched against the Abzas Media team, and six employees are currently in pre-trial detention.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned diplomats from the US, Germany, and France, accusing them of involvement in illegal financial operations through Abzas Media.

Aziz Orujov, director of the independent YouTube news channel Kanal 13, was detained on November 29 and remains in custody, facing charges of unauthorised construction on land without proper rights, which could lead to a three-year prison sentence.

The wave of arrests continued in March 2024 with the detention of Alasgar Mammadli, a well-known Azerbaijani media expert and founder of Toplum TV, on smuggling charges. Simultaneously, the court ordered four-month pre-trial detentions for four Toplum TV reporters on similar charges.

Additionally, Akif Gurbanov and Ruslan Izzatli, founding board members of the democracy group Third Republic Platform, were also arrested under charges of smuggling.

On 18 April, Imran Aliyev, founder of the watchdog initiative meclis.info, was arrested at the Baku airport on smuggling charges.

Another pro-democracy activist, Anar Mammadli, a former political prisoner and head of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDC), was detained on 29 April, just days after President Aliyev’s return from the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, an annual international climate negotiation in Berlin.

Responding to questions at a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Ilham Aliyev justified the ongoing crackdown. “If there is a media platform that unlawfully receives funds from abroad being investigated, it does not mean that media in Azerbaijan is not free,” he said in Berlin.

Azerbaijan has steadily slipped in the international rankings regarding respect for democratic principles and freedom of expression over the last 20 years. In 2024, Freedom House rated Azerbaijan among the “not free” countries, giving it seven out of 100 points in the Global Freedom Index.

The country currently ranks 164th among 180 countries in the annual Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders.

The crackdown is not limited to the independent media and NGOs; in May, the USCIRF recommended that the US State Department designate Azerbaijan as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA).

According to the latest list of political prisoners, 254 individuals have been convicted on political motives, 183 of whom are “peaceful believers.”

Meanwhile, Azerbaijani state-linked media blames the West for protests in neighbouring Georgia against the proposed “foreign agent law.”

According to the mainstream government-friendly media narrative, the West wants to use Georgia as a shield to transfer revolutionary technologies to Azerbaijan and other countries, while the ruling Georgian Dream Party fights to preserve the country’s sovereignty.

The pro-government media’s reaction is unsurprising, given that Azerbaijani authorities have amended NGO legislation over the years to restrict foreign funding and the operations of foreign donors in the country.

Despite repeated calls from domestic and international organisations, the authorities have not lifted the restrictive multi-tier registration requirements.

“After the West’s criticism of the September military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, the West is antagonised in the public discourse,” Bahruz Samadov, a PhD candidate at Charles University who examines authoritarian practices in Azerbaijan, told Euractiv.

“The Aliyev government can continue its crackdown on civil society with impunity due to its bolstered legitimacy after restoring full control over Nagorno-Karabakh, gaining Russia’s favour over Armenia, and with the EU’s increasing need for Azerbaijani energy. Traditional methods of international advocacy campaigns don’t work anymore,” he said.

This article is part of the FREIHEIT media project on Europe’s Neighbourhood, funded by the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF).

[Edited by Alexandra Brzozowski/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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