Strasbourg, 09/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 7 October, Council of Europe (CoE) secretary general Thorbjorn Jagland informed the Committee of Ministers of his decision to suspend the organisation's participation in the joint working group on human rights in Azerbaijan.
Comprising 18 human rights activists, parliamentarians and officials from the presidential administration, the working group was set up in 2008 and reactivated in October 2014, with the aim of relaunching dialogue between civil society and the Azeri authorities.
When the participation of a CoE representative on the platform went on the record books in October 2014, Jagland welcomed the release of four human rights activists by presidential decree and said he was impatient for the release of Ilgar Mammadov, a human rights activist whose release was demanded by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in a definitive ruling (see EUROPE 11330). An interim resolution from the Committee of Ministers dated 24 September demanded application of the ECHR decision and the activist's release.
One year on, Ilgar Mammadov is still incarcerated and in a press release the CoE says that overall, the situation facing human rights activists in Azerbaijan has deteriorated considerably with an increasing number of activists recently thrown in jail and the CoE receiving worrying reports about unacceptable detention conditions.
These facts explain the suspension of the CoE's participation in the working group, which meets in Baku.
On 29 September 2014, the CoE awarded the Vaclav Havel Prize for Human Rights to Azeri dissident Anar Mammadli, described by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience. The human rights activist was sentenced to five years imprisonment in May 2014. He was unable to travel to Strasbourg to receive the prize and is currently still in prison. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)