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The Azerbaijani government escalated its repression against its critics in 2014, with a dramatic deterioration in its already poor rights record, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2015, where the of human rights condition in 90 countries is presented.

The report states that during the year the government of Azerbaijan on spurious charges had arrested and convicted a dozen of people, including leading human rights activists and journalists; it has also frozen the bank accounts of at least 50 independent NGOs and their leaders, hampered their work, refusing to register the foreign grants, and had adopted amendments to the legislation restricting the work of independent groups. Many of the prisoners complained of ill-treatment by the police. Many organizations were forced to cease operations.

The report reads that the repression continued even during the presidency of Azerbaijan in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which is the main authority in the field of human rights in Europe. The Azerbaijani government should release all the political prisoners and should stop the repressions.

"Instead of using his position in the Council of Europe to address the long-standing problems in the field of human rights in the country, the government came down on his critics with false accusations, detaining more than 34 human rights defenders, political and civil society activists, journalists and bloggers, forcing the others to flee the country or to hide," the report reads.
Azerbaijan's international partners condemned Baku for the repressions, but did not fully use leverage in their relations with the Government of Azerbaijan to ensure the rights improvements, the report continues.

"The Council of Europe and other international partners of Baku should make it clear that such behavior is unacceptable, and urge the immediate release of political prisoners," said the senior researcher of “Human Rights Watch” for the South Caucasus Giorgi Gogia.

According to the report European games are to be held in Azerbaijan this year. The organizers of the European games are the National Olympic Committees of Europe, which means that the country must preserve the human rights principles of the Olympic Charter. The authorities of Azerbaijan, on the contrary, put pressure on critics, reduce foreign funding, froze bank accounts of independent groups, threaten and detain journalists and activists of social media.

"The organizers of the European games should urgently examine nasty history of Eurovision 2012 that was held in Azerbaijan," the report reads.