Human rights activist: Social condition of citizens in Azerbaijan is not good, despite of oil revenues
There are several reasons for the lack of the improvement in the human rights situation in Azerbaijan. One of them is associated with the high oil revenues, but in 2015 the production will decrease, the head of the National Committee of the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly Arzu Abdullayeva said in an interview with the Objective TV, the Azerbaijani news agency “Turan” reports.
According to her, in spite of the oil revenues, the social status of the citizens in Azerbaijan is not good enough.
"It should not be like that in a country that is rich in resources. The deterioration of the social condition of the population may become an impetus for the activity of the people. However, the authorities are trying to pre-empt these processes. That is why the number of arrests and harassment of civil society activists is growing," said the human rights activist.
As for the issue of political prisoners, according to Arzu Abdullayeva, it depends on the willingness of the Azerbaijani authorities who demonstratively show that they can solve or ignore this problem.
International organizations have a very limited mechanism of pressure on Baku, Abdullayeva says. To the question why Azerbaijan does not fulfill the decision of the European Court, the human rights activist briefly replied: "Because it does not want to." In the same time, she referred to informal information stating that Baku placates the European Court with an aim to take decisions that suit only Azerbaijan.
Referring to multiple calls addressed to human rights activists and journalists to attend the public prosecutor's office when back from trips to Armenia, Abdullayeva noted that she was also called. "It is done to intimidate people, in order to leave people with one choice only - to become a pro-governmental. However, the idea of pro-governmental NGOs is nonsense," Abdullayeva noted.