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Palais de L'Élysée

55 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré

75008 Paris, France

April 22, 2015

Dear President Hollande,

We write to urge you to use your upcoming visit to Baku to call on President Aliyev to immediately and unconditionally release Leyla and Arif Yunus, Intigam Aliyev, Rasul Jafarov, Khadija Ismayilova, and the other human rights defenders, journalists, and activists his government has imprisoned on politically motivated charges. We further urge you to make clear that neither you nor high-level French officials will be attending the opening ceremonies of the European Games to be hosted by Baku in June unless these individuals are freed.

President Aliyev should be urged to end the sweeping crackdown his government has unleashed on civil society and human rights work in Azerbaijan, and ensure that all of independent civil society can operate without undue hindrance or fear of persecution. This entails unfreezing bank accounts of nongovernmental groups and their staff, allowing civil society organizations to receive foreign funding without unnecessary and onerous restrictions, and repealing recently adopted legislation that further restricts rules for foreign funding of NGO work.

In the year since your last visit to Baku, in May 2014, Azerbaijan’s already deeply negative human rights trajectory has seen a dramatic decline, making the past 12 months the worst the country has seen since its post-Soviet independence. The authorities have imprisoned dozens of activists, including most of the country’s leading human rights defenders and independent journalists, on politically-motivated charges, and driven others into exile or hiding. They have also frozen the bank accounts of independent civic groups and their leaders; denied them access to funds by refusing to register foreign grants; and adopted new, draconian legislation that has made it all but impossible to carry out independent human rights work in the country. Taken together, these developments have fundamentally transformed Azerbaijan’s human rights landscape, to the point that it must now be considered through the lens of a closed country. Indeed, in late March, Human Rights Watch’s senior researcher for the South Caucasus was barred from entering the country, marking the first time in Human Rights Watch’s 25-year history of working on Azerbaijan that we were denied access.

Last week’s shocking yet sadly predictable bogus conviction of leading rights activist Rasul Jafarov to a 6.5 year prison term should be a jarring wake-up call and prompt Azerbaijan’s partners to respond to Baku’s repression in a much more decisive manner than has been the case to date.

The weeks leading up to the European Games, with the resulting heightened international spotlight on Azerbaijan provide a unique window of opportunity for effective external pressure on Baku. We urge you to fully seize this rare moment by impressing upon President Aliyev the critical importance France attaches to seeing all those wrongly imprisoned released and the crackdown against government critics brought to an end.

Thank you for your attention to this pressing matter. We hope that we can count on your principled resolve at this critical juncture.

Sincerely,

Jean-Marie Fardeau

Director, France

Human Rights Watch

Hugh Williamson

Director, Europe and Central Asia Division

Human Rights Watch

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