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The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) expressed concern regarding the judicial harassment to Azerbaijani human rights defender Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif Yunus. The statement is published in the site of OMCT.

In their joint statement OMCT and FIDH call upon the authorities in Azerbaijan to ensure Leyla Yunus’ and Arif Yunus’ physical and psychological integrity by providing adequate medical care as well as to release them immediately and unconditionally, as their detention seems to only aim at sanctioning their activities amidst a wave of increasing repression against civil society in Azerbaijan.

It is noted in the statement that Leyla Yunus’ two lawyers were excluded from the process of protecting her.

"The government has no boundaries when it comes to my parents. My mum is a prominent human rights defender, and they want to just shut her down by putting her behind bars," said Leyla Yunus’ daughter Dinara Yunus in the interview to VICE News.

According to the article Dinara Yunus has not seen her parents since their arrest, as she currently lives in the Netherlands, for which she left Azerbaijan five years ago following death threats she had received in retaliation for her parents' human rights work.

It is noted in the article, that ahead of a meeting between Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and Francois Hollande in Paris on October 27, Dinara wrote the French leader an open letter urging him to raise the issue her parent's imprisonment. According to French news and journalists Hollande did just that. But the outcome was not what she had wished for.

"A couple of days after Aliyev's visit to France, my mother's lawyer, Javad Javadov — who knows her case well and has been representing her from the start — was told that he could no longer represent her in court, but could only stand as a witness," said Dinara Yunus.

On Wednesday, it was announced that another of Leyla's lawyers, Khalid Bagirov, had also been barred from representing her.

“Free Speech Radio News” states that in oil-rich ex-Soviet state Azerbaijan the situation of human rights has deteriorated after a summer of arrests and beatings of prominent activists and independent journalists. And now authorities in Azerbaijan are making it increasingly difficult for NGOs to work in the country.

According to the article there hasn’t been a single transparent election in the country since it gained independence in 1991. In this context, a number of NGOs and think tanks work in the country promoting democratic values. Most are funded by foreign entities. But recently the government amended the law that covers foreign funding for NGOs.

“Some government representatives don’t understand perception of civil society and role of civil society, and what is happening around our country influences our state officials and sometimes they see NGOs as opposite to them, and sometimes as a source of revolution in the country, sometimes they compare the situation with Ukraine or Middle East,” said Mireli Huseynov, head of the NGO Democracy Learning Public Association. He says he fears he could be arrested any moment, like dozens of other democracy activists.

It is noted that despite the fact that the country is now chairing the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, groups like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Freedom House roundly criticize Azerbaijan’s human rights record.

During the last few months human rights activists and pro-democracy organizations have been the target of a large scale crackdown on civil society. U.S.-based IREX is one of them. Transparency International, Oxfam and the National Democratic Institute have all had their bank account blocked in the past few months. The same thing happened to the Center for National and International Studies.

“We stopped our activities, we cannot legally operate so we have to close our office we cannot pay the rent, we cannot go to meetings of researchers we cannot publish our book,” said Leyla Aliyeva, the head of the Center for National and International Studies.