Repression Intensifies in the Country Hosting a Major Climate Meeting

Human rights watchdogs say Azerbaijan is in the midst of a vicious campaign of repression. But in global geopolitics, this energy-rich Caucasus country now has a lot of leverage.

In the months leading up to a high-profile global climate summit in November, the government of Azerbaijan has been intensely preparing for its role as host, renovating building facades, training volunteers and retrofitting a stadium for tens of thousands of delegates.

The energy-rich nation in the Caucasus Mountains region has engaged in more ominous activity as well: It has locked up dozens of activists and journalists in what experts describe as the country’s most aggressive campaign of repression in years.

The spate of arrests, which began last year, has surprised some observers who expected that Azerbaijan’s authoritarian ruler, President Ilham Aliyev, would feel international pressure to project an image of political openness before the summit, which is convened by the United Nations. Instead, human rights monitors and political analysts say, Mr. Aliyev appears intent on stamping out the last vestiges of independent civil society and free press in his country.

“We haven’t seen repression like this in the country in a long time,” said Stefan Meister, who studies Azerbaijan and other parts of the former Soviet Union for the German Council on Foreign Relations. Some of the arrests, he said, appeared to be an effort to “eliminate everything that could lead to criticism around COP,” as the climate change meeting, officially the Conference of the Parties, is known.

Those arrested have included at least 12 journalists for at least three prominent independent media outlets, human rights watchdogs say. They have also included well-known activists like Anar Mammadli, who was arrested weeks after he co-founded a group in February called the Climate Justice Initiative that aimed to use the climate summit to pressure the government to improve human rights and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Aliyev has dismissed international criticism of the arrests as a “smear campaign” intended to distract from “our noble mission to cope with the negative impacts of climate change.” The authorities have cited alleged financial crimes and violations of Azerbaijan’s stringent code for nongovernmental organizations as reasons for the arrests.

“Being a journalist and being a civil society representative doesn’t mean that somebody should be above the law,” Mr. Aliyev’s foreign policy adviser, Hikmet Hajiyev, said in a phone interview. “All actions that have been taken are taken with the framework of law.”

International human rights groups call the arrests politically motivated and the charges baseless. In a report last month documenting the arrests, Human Rights Watch urged countries that participate in the climate meeting in Baku, the capital, to “speak out vocally” about “the worsening environment for civil society.”