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In an appeal to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, 23 relatives of the director of Meydan TV, Emin Milly, declared they cut ties with him, the newspaper Yeni Musavat reports, according to the news portal Haqqin.az.

The oppositionist’s relatives explain their step by “Emin Milli’s betrayal of Azerbaijan and holding a radical anti-Azerbaijani campaign,” according to the report. Haqqin.az presumes that the desperate step of Emin Milli’s relatives is connected with the recent arrest of his wife’s brother, programmer Nazim Agabekov, who was arrested on 27 June and then “found to possess drugs.” This was perceived by many as a form of pressure on the oppositionist blogger. “Emin Milli’s other relatives apparently fear arrests,” Haqqin.az writes.

Meanwhile, the executive secretary of the Azerbaijani movement “republican Alternative” (ReAl), Natig Jafarli, told the news portal Caucasian Knot that the lawyer of ReAl’s arrested leader Ilgar Mammadov had reported about another convict’s attack on Mammadov in prison on 29 June 2015.

“That man, serving a ten-year sentence, started to assert claims to Ilgar Mammadov regarding his political views. He started to hit Ilgar on the chest, head and neck,” Jafarli said. The activists of ReAl were expecting such kind of provocation against Mammadov because he had repeatedly rejected offers to write a petition to pardon him. Now they want to force him to do that, Jafarli added.
Turan agency reports that the trail oo the case of Asif Yusifly, Azerbaijani Parliament member from the Popular Front Party, ended in the Baku Court of Grave Crimes on 30 July 2015. The court found him guilty of fraud and forgery, and sentenced to 7.5 years in prison.

In his final word, Yusifly said that the reason for his arrest were his political activity, consistent struggle for democracy, active protection of Karabakh war disabled veterans’ rights, running the blog “End Oppression,” posts in Facebook and Twitter. Fakhraddin Mehdiyev, the lawyer, told Turan the court’s decision was unfair. He said the court did not take into consideration the fact that Yusifli is Karabakh war disabled veteran of group 1 and the caretaker of small children.

There also came reports about deterioration of the arrested human rights defender Leyla Yunus’ health. “Sharp pains in the stomach, continuous vomiting, which result in hindering her ability to eat. The lack of adequate medical care deprives her from the chance of complete treatment. Currently, she is taking pills against liver enlargement, while Professor K.Vitt has also recommended her high-calorie diet for that, i. e. fruit and meat. However, she has no chance to eat properly, given the fact she receives food only once a week and, in addition, she is not alone in the cell. Processes of emaciation, stomach stenosis and spasms resulting in vomiting are on. I think one must not necessarily have medical education to realize the dangerous consequences,” Elchin Gambarov, Yunus’ lawyer, wrote for Turan after a visit to his defendant on 30 July 2015.

The World organization against Torture (OMCT) published a statement issued by the coalition Sport for Rights. A year after the Azerbaijani government launched an unprecedented crackdown on human rights, the situation in the country continues to deteriorate. The Sport for Rights Coalition calls on the international community to immediately and publicly condemn the government of Azerbaijan's actions and take concrete steps to support Azerbaijani civil society. “Yunus’s arrest marked the start of a period of unprecedented repression in Azerbaijan,” the Coalition said and noted that the founder of Sport for Right campaign, Rasul Jafarov, was arrested on 2 August 2014. On 5 August 2014, Leyla Yunus’ husband Arif Yunus, a historian and activist in his own right, was arrested, followed by human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev on 8 August 2014.

On 8 August 2014, authorities searched and closed the office of Azerbaijan’s leading press freedom organization, the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS). IRFS Chairman Emin Huseynov sought refuge in the Swiss Embassy in Baku, where he remained for 10 months, fearing arrest. On 12 June, Huseynov flew out of Azerbaijan on the plane of Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter, who attended the opening ceremony of the European Games in Baku.

“For many years now, the Azerbaijani authorities have employed a range of tactics to silence critical voices, from physical attacks and torture to blackmail and imprisonment. In Huseynov’s case, however, they introduced an outrageous new tactic. In an unprecedented step, in violation of international and Azerbaijani law, the government stripped Huseynov of his Azerbaijani citizenship. He has become a stateless person, left with no choice but to apply for asylum in Switzerland,” the human rights defenders stressed. “The Sport for Rights coalition fears that without widespread international condemnation, the same tactic could be applied to others, with the nationality of ‘unwelcome’ activists renounced.”

Committee to Protect Journalists’ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said that the Azerbaijani regime is known for punishing its critics in the aftermath of the global mega events it has hosted, and the illegal, retaliatory renouncing of Emin Huseynov’s citizenship is an illustration of that. So is the harassment of the few remaining independent journalists in the country and the intimidation of the families of those pushed into exile.

The human rights defenders pointed out that in a renewed assault against civil society, the Azerbaijani authorities have increasingly been targeting the family members of exiled activists. Ganimat Zahid, the editor-in-chief of Azadliq newspaper who has been in political exile since being forced to flee Azerbaijan in 2011, has seen the arrest of his cousin and two nephews on charges varying from “refusing to comply with police instructions” to drug possession.

Now, as international media attention has shifted from the country following the European Games, the broader human rights crackdown continues. The jailed Azerbaijani rights defenders are facing show trials marred by irregularity and due process violations, carried out by a judiciary that completely lacks independence. Although the charges against these rights defenders are spurious and politically motivated, they have no hope of fair and impartial trials, the Coalition stressed.
Deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, Rachel Denber, published an article in the online magazine The Slate. She highlights that the Kremlin’s crackdown on freedoms in Russia has made headlines everywhere. Meanwhile in Azerbaijan, the repressions that have decimated the country’s human rights community have not garnered the same attention or outrage.

“In my 24 years in human rights work in former Soviet countries, I have never seen a government this busy jailing human rights leaders, whose lives—and the lives of their families—are now in ruins,” Denber writes.

According to Denber, the reason for the continuing repressions in Azerbaijan is that the government faced no consequences. She brings Azerbaijan’s chairmanship of the Council of Europe as an illustration to the claim. However, the human rights defender notes that the situation has started to change. In June 2015, 25 states joined at the United Nations Human Rights Council to issue a statement marking concern about the crackdown and calling for the release of arrested human rights defenders, marking the first time Azerbaijan has been singled out in this way at the United Nations. The same week, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe also condemned the crackdown and called for it to end.