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Background

Azerbaijan has a poor record on civil and political rights.¹ The transition from the Soviet Union to independence brought instability to the country, including revolutions and war. In 1993 Heydar Aliev, a former high-level KGB official and former first secretary of the Soviet Azerbaijan Communist Party, resumed the leadership of Azerbaijan, and responded to the instability in the country by cracking down on all forms of opposition.² This included restrictions on legitimate opposition political activity, with opposition party activists often being forced into exile or into a precarious existence, facing the possibility of being treated as an enemy of the state, fired from work, or sent to prison.

President Heydar Aliev died in 2003, after illness had forced him to withdraw from the presidential election held that October. The election was won by his son, Ilham Aliev, but it fell far short of international standards, with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) finding that it was fraudulent. Although the international community raised concerns over the elections and the subsequent crackdown on the opposition, the response was somewhat muted: it seemed that the United States and member states of the European Union were willing to accept the result in the hope that President Ilham Aliev’s government would maintain stability and begin to introduce democratic reforms.

The record of the new government, however, has been no better than the previous one. Human rights abuses against the political opposition have continued, and the media remains hampered by government controls and repression. Under threat of political sanctions from the Council of Europe, a series of presidential decrees ordered the release of significant numbers of political prisoners. However, the system that created political prisoners remains in place and continues to operate.

The issue of stability took on a new meaning regionally when government fraud in the November 2003 parliamentary elections in Georgia led to a popular uprising and then revolution in that country. This was followed in late 2004 and early 2005 by a similar upheaval in Ukraine, and then in Kyrgyzstan in March and April 2005. Suddenly, people in the region began to believe that it was possible to resist fraudulent elections, a hallmark of post-Soviet countries.

Particularly after the Ukrainian revolution, opposition supporters in Azerbaijan began to hope for international support for their calls for free and fair elections, expecting this to lead to a change in government, either through elections or revolution.³ The government made it clear that Azerbaijan was not a place for revolution. Judging from the government’s response to protests after the October 2003 presidential election, there is a real potential for violent confrontation if the opposition decides to carry out protests against the results of the November 2005 parliamentary elections.

Past Elections

International and domestic observers have found that parliamentary, presidential, and municipal elections from 1995 to 2004 fell far short of established international standards.⁴ In each of these elections, there were irregularities on election day itself that breached the integrity of the elections. However, it was also clear from election monitoring that violations, as an extension of an already established pattern of persecution of opposition party supporters, began during the early stages of the election campaigns.⁵

Many of the election violations that have taken place in previous elections, and that are also documented in this briefing paper as taking place during the run-up to the November 2005 election, were committed by local government authorities and law enforcement agencies. The power of local government authorities to influence the election environment is enormous. Government authorities in Azerbaijan employ approximately 30 percent of the workforce.⁶ They also have a significant level of control over the ability of others to make a living, for example, through issuing licenses, controlling borders, and policing trading regulations. The high level of unemployment and poverty that exists in Azerbaijan means that people acutely fear losing their livelihood, and as evidenced during the crackdown after the October 2003 presidential election, local authorities are prepared to punish opposition supporters or others who are seen as not supporting the government by taking away employment. Human Rights Watch documented over 100 cases of opposition supporters being dismissed from work or having their working hours sharply curtailed after the October 2003 election, and the real figure of dismissals was probably much higher.⁷ While carrying out research for this briefing paper, on repeated occasions people refused to speak to Human Rights Watch about alleged pressure on them from local authorities, for fear of losing their employment.

Violations of the electoral code are rarely prosecuted, adding to what the OSCE has called “a culture of impunity and non-accountability.”⁸ The lack of an independent judiciary in Azerbaijan perpetuates impunity for government interference in the electoral process. Judges are renowned for both corruption and bias in favor of prosecuting authorities. The public has little trust in the justice system and consequently often will not bring complaints before the courts. Similarly, prosecuting authorities are reluctant to bring prosecutions for electoral fraud. Following the 2003 election, OSCE calls to prosecute those responsible for violations of the electoral code were ignored.⁹  Although the Central Election Commission referred some one hundered cases of election fraud to the prosecutor’s office, no election officials were tried for violations or fraudulent conduct.¹⁰