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Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev shrugged off criticism of his government's record on free speech during the visit to Germany on Wednesday and the meeting of Angela Merkel, Reuters writes.

As the agency reports Azerbaijan has no problem with the press freedom ranking. Neither is there any problem with his personal rating as well as the last polls where he received more than 90 percent of the votes of the population.

However as it is noted in the article Human Rights Watch expressed its disappointment and urged the German leader to challenge Aliyev on human rights, complaining that authorities arrested more than 30 critics of his government last year.
The European office of "Radio Liberty" in the article published on its website said that according to the lawyer of the arrest Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova, she was held in solitary confinement for 24 hours.

The article also reminded that both parliamentary and presidential elections in Azerbaijan have been widely criticized by international monitoring organizations, as they were neither free, nor fair.

International NGO coalition " Sport for Rights” which is designed for raising the issue of the persecution of the Azerbaijani government on the background of the upcoming European games, also published an appeal to the Chancellor of Germany on the site of the international human rights organization "Index on Censorship", in which she was encouraged to make the human rights issue a core topic during the meeting with Aliyev. Representing the state of human rights in Azerbaijan and the names of political prisoners, the coalition says that the upcoming European Games in Baku will fail if the government will not change its policy.

Members of the coalition are the Centre for Civil Liberties (Ukraine), the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Poland), Index on Censorship (UK), International Partnership for Human Rights (Belgium), Netherlands Helsinki Committee (Netherlands), Norwegian Helsinki Committee (Norway), People in Need (Czech Republic), Platform (UK), Youaid Foundation (Poland) and a group of Azerbaijani civil society activists who wish to remain anonymous as they are concerned for the safety of their family members.

In its turn, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint program of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture have addressed by an appeal to send a letter addressed to President Ilham Aliyev and other officials of Azerbaijan, with a call to ensure the safety of political prisoner, human rights defender Intigam Aliyev, to release him and stop the persecution of human rights defenders of Azerbaijan and to provide all facilities for the respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with international standards ratified by Azerbaijan.

The appeal notes that on January 16, 2014 a preliminary hearing on the case of Intigam Aliyevis to be held It was to be held in Baku Court of Grave Crimes previously but was postponed to January 23.