Azerbaijan using Cop29 to ‘greenwash’ corruption
Azerbaijan, an oil and gas-rich country on the Caspian Sea that is squeezed between Russia and Iran, has been ruled by the Aliyev family for more than 30 years. Baku, its capital city, was chosen to host this year’s Cop29 talks after Moscow usedits right of veto to prevent European Union countries from staging the event.
There are more than 300 political prisoners in the regime’s jails, according to human rights activists, while dozens of dissidents, journalists and trade unionists were detained in the months leading up to Cop29. The US State Department said last year there were “credible reports” that the government was complicit in extrajudicial killings and torture.
“The Azerbaijani government has never taken environmental issues or climate change seriously. For many years they have destroyed the forests of Azerbaijan and they have polluted the Caspian Sea. They have not even provided drinking water to [all of] Azerbaijan,” Ali Karimli, the leader of the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan, told The Times.
“Cop29 is very much to Aliyev’s advantage. The regime wants to greenwash its image and for all the political arrests and corruption to recede into the background. Such important international events should take place in democratic countries: authoritarian regimes should not be allowed to use them to legitimise themselves.”
Sir Keir Starmer spoke in Baku on Tuesday and pledged to cut Britain’s emissions by more than 80 per cent over the next decade. Most western leaders skipped the event, including President Biden, President Macron and Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor.
BP’s decades-long relationship with the former Soviet state means that Britain is the biggest foreign investor in Azerbaijan, with total investments exceeding £28 billion, according to Baku. Karimli and other government critics said they hoped that Starmer would use Britain’s influence in Azerbaijan to pressure the regime on human rights issues. “As the head of the British government, he can and should talk openly about political repression to Aliyev,” he said.
Karimli, 59, briefly served as secretary of state before Aliyev’s father, Heydar Aliyev, came to power following a coup in 1993, two years after Azerbaijan gained independence from Moscow. Dozens of his party’s members have been arrested on what he says were trumped-up charges, while he has been barred from leaving Azerbaijan since 2006, a restriction that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled to be illegal.
He is also facing prison after being accused of slandering a former opposition ally, an allegation that he says is politically motivated. The trial has been postponed until December 2, just after Cop29 ends, a move that Karimli said was aimed at ensuring that the climate talks were not overshadowed by his case.
Azerbaijan’s exports are dominated by oil and gas, earning it tens of billions of dollars in revenues that critics say have lined the pockets of corrupt officials. On Tuesday, Aliyev told Cop29 delegates that his country’s energy reserves were a “gift of god.” The European Union replaced Russia with Azerbaijan as a gas supplier following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the regime plans to boost gas production by more than a third in the next decade.
In April, Anar Mammadli, a human rights and climate activist, was arrested by masked police as he picked his child up from nursery. A United Nations official called his arrest on currency smuggling charges “apparent reprisal for his environmental activism.” He faces up to eight yearsin prison. The Azerbaijani government denies that there are any political prisoners in the country.
Last year, riot police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protests against toxic waste from a mine run by Anglo Asian Mining, a British-based company. Journalists who tried to cover the protests were arrested and the area remains under a police lockdown. Shortly before Cop29 kicked off, video of children playing on oil-polluted land near Baku was published by RFE/RL, the US government-funded website.
Azerbaijan, which has moved closer to Russia in recent years, was accused by human rights groups of carrying out a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing after its recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh last year, an Armenian enclave on internationally recognised Azerbaijani territory.
The regime has also cracked down on Azerbaijani academics whose work is critical of the government. Among them is Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu, an economist who is a senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.
Ibadoghlu, who is based in Britain, was arrested during a visit to Azerbaijan to see his ailing mother in 2023. He faces up to 17 years in prison on counterfeit currency and extremism charges that his supporters say were revenge for his reports on “rampant” corruption and environmental issues. He spent nine months in pre-trial detention before being placed under house arrest.
A group of British MPs has urged Azerbaijan to free Ibadoghlu, while the European parliament has supported a resolution calling for his release. Previously existing health conditions, including type 2 diabetes and hypertension, have deteriorated since his arrest, leading to fears for his life. An independent medical report said that he requires urgent heart surgery. His allies say the regime has refused to provide him with vital medical care.
His son, Ibad Bayramov, said that he hoped that Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, had raised his father’s plight with Aliyev. “I would be disappointed if he doesn’t because Cop29 puts Azerbaijan in the spotlight like never before,” he said. “We want the UK to request his transfer abroad for medical surgery. He is an LSE professor, and therefore, he has a direct connection to the UK. Failing to do anything could result in his death.”
Ibadoghlu, who remains under house arrest, had also argued that the European Union’s move to replace Russia with Azerbaijan as a gas supplier was “unrealistic.” In an LSE blog, he said that the only viable way for Baku to meet its commitments to Europe would be to purchase additional gas from Russia and Turkmenistan, a brutal dictatorship in Central Asia.
His comments came as Azerbaijan began importing Russian gas to cover its own domestic needs, allowing it to sell its own gas onto Europe. “We want western countries to understand that the money they are providing to the Azerbaijan in exchange for oil and gas only strengthens Aliyev’s regime,” Bayramov said.
