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Long-term suppression of independent voices in Azerbaijan reached its peak as we approach the end of the six-month Presidency of the Council of Europe. This is stated in the statement of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, published on the website of the organization.

“The Azerbaijani government’s systematic crackdown on human rights defenders and other perceived government critics shows sheer contempt for its commitments to the Council of Europe,” said Giorgi Gogia, senior South Caucasus researcher at Human Rights Watch. “To let the relentless repression go unanswered threatens the very credibility of the institution.”

As it is noted in the statement Azerbaijan assumed the six-month rotating chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in May 2014, despite years of suppression of criticism and failure to adhere to the commitments it undertook when joining the organization. But instead of cleaning up its record and addressing longstanding concerns, the government stepped up its crackdown.

Over the last two-and-a-half years Azerbaijan has brought or threatened unfounded criminal charges against at least 50 independent and opposition political activists, journalists, bloggers, and human rights defenders. Most of them remain behind bars. In the months since Azerbaijan assumed the chairmanship of the Council of Europe the government has dramatically escalated its attack on activists.

According to the statement the government has particularly intensified repression against human rights defenders, targeting some of the country’s most prominent activists like Leyla Yunus, her husband, the historian Arif Yunus, Rasul Jafarov, chair of Azerbaijan’s Human Rights Club, and Intigam Aliyev, chair of the Legal Education Society. All four are in pretrial detention on spurious charges, ranging from tax evasion to treason.

The statement also reads that the Council of Europe’s leadership, including its secretary general, the president of its parliamentary assembly, and the human rights commissioner, as well as its member states, should call on the Azerbaijani government to release, immediately and unconditionally, all those wrongfully imprisoned and drop the politically motivated cases against them, stop the ongoing campaign of harassment and intimidation against independent organizations and allow them to work unimpeded, and undertake, without further delay, long-overdue human rights reforms.

“The council’s leadership should condemn Baku’s behavior in the strongest possible terms and make clear that there cannot be business as usual until those imprisoned on politically motivated charges are freed and the crackdown brought to an end,” Gogia stated.