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While the international community continues to engage in business as usual with oil-rich Azerbaijan, the country is quickly losing claim to any remaining pretence that it is a democracy. Azerbaijani civil society is under attack at unprecedented levels, as the government wages a vicious campaign to silence its critics, American-British human rights activist currently based in London Rebecca Vincent writes in an article in Al Jazeera.

In particular, the Azerbaijani authorities seem intent on punishing those who exposed human rights problems in the country during the period of increased international media attention ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest and Internet Governance Forum (IGF). Rights groups warned of potential retaliation once this attention had faded. They turned out to be right.

“Over the past few months, the Azerbaijani authorities have been scrambling to silence all critical voices in the country - including mine,” the author says and notes that in a highly unusual move, in December, the authorities revoked my residence permit while I was travelling outside of the country, preventing me from returning to my home in Baku and effectively separating my family ever since. No official explanation has been given, but diplomatic negotiations confirmed that the action was politically motivated.

According to her in the run-up to Eurovision and the IGF, she worked with a wide range of international and local human rights organisations that were publically critical of Azerbaijan's record on issues such as freedom of expression and internet freedom, including through two reports that were banned from being distributed at the IGF. But my work with a new local campaign, Art for Democracy, which had launched just a week earlier in a December 11 event, seems to have been the clincher. Art for Democracy seeks to use all forms of artistic expression to promote human rights and democracy in the country.

“Since December, the human rights situation in the country has deteriorated at an alarming rate. In January, authorities responded to an unrelated series of anti-government protests in Baku and other regions.” the author writes.

At the same time, authorities appeared to support protests against the author Akram Aylisli following his publication of Stone Dreams, a novel covering the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from a perspective his critics allege is sympathetic to Armenia. Pro-government groups held pickets in February calling Aylisli a traitor and burning his book. “Authorities have also started taking steps to eliminate any chance of a free and fair presidential election in October,” the article said.

Republicanist Alternative (REAL) movement presidential candidate Ilgar Mammadov is in pre-trial detention, facing up to 10 years imprisonment on politically motivated charges of organising mass disorder and violently resisting police.

“Despite this rapid deterioration, the international community has hardly taken note. The support promised to Azerbaijani activists by IGF participants has certainly been lacking,” Vincent writes. She recalls that European politicians directly contributed to the downward spiral by failing to support a resolution on political prisoners in Azerbaijan in a January 23 vote at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe - a move that the Azerbaijani authorities clearly interpreted as carte blanche to continue arresting persons for politically motivated reasons.

“To top it all, as recently as February 20, the European Union enhanced a Memorandum of Understanding on Energy with Azerbaijan, signaling once again that in realpolitik, oil trumps human rights,” the human rights activist writes.