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United States officials should urge Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, during his visit to Washington to free unjustly imprisoned government critics and political activists. They should also urge Aliyev to lift restrictions on activists recently freed from prison and reform laws that severely curtail fundamental freedoms, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Aliyev will participate in the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., from March 31 to April 1, 2016. It is his first visit to the United States since 2012. 

“The Obama administration and members of Congress shouldn’t miss this crucial opportunity to encourage Aliyev to end the country’s human rights crackdown,” said Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch.

Emin Huseynov, an Azerbaijani human rights defender and political emigrant, writes for the Foreign Policy that Ilham Aliyev visited Washington D.C for a photo with Barack Obama and has released 16 political prisoners for that. “A one-on-one meeting with Obama doesn’t appear to be in the cards, but Aliyev seems to have scored a private meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry today, and he may still be seeking a photo opportunity, meetings with other top U.S. officials, or some other form of validation. If the United States values its commitment to human rights and democracy, it should make sure he doesn’t get it,” Huseynov highlights.

According to him, the Nuclear Security Summit is a particularly important occasion for autocrats like Aliyev to burnish their reputations back home. The lavish public relations spectacles, like the 2015 European Games and the upcoming Formula One European Grand Prix, show that Aliyev desperately craves international status, and a photo with Obama would give him the image boost he seeks in the midst of an economic crisis at home.

Despite a powerful lobbying effort in the United States, Aliyev has not been able to secure an invitation to the White House during Obama’s time in office. But even a photo with the US president would be too much recognition unless Aliyev offers clearly stated and comprehensive human rights reforms, the expert writes.

Huseynov also highlights that he knows first-hand about the brutality of Aliyev’s regime. “As a journalist and human rights activist in Azerbaijan, and as director of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety — the country’s leading media rights organisation — I was targeted repeatedly, including being beaten so badly by police officers that I now suffer from permanent hearing loss and other health problems.”

To save escape the persecutions of the authorities of the country, Emin Huseynov was forced to hide in the Swiss Embassy in Baku since August 2014 after the US Embassy refused to help him. He was charged under three articles of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan. International rights groups maintained those charged were politically motivated. After long negotiations with the Azerbaijani authorities, the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, Didier Burkhalter, accompanied Huseynov out of Azerbaijan on 13 June 2015.

Huseynov points out that there are more political prisoners in Azerbaijan, than in Belarus and Russia combined. The legislation on NGOs is regressive in Azerbaijan. In September 2014, President Obama commented that the laws in Azerbaijan “make it incredibly difficult for NGOs even to operate.”

On March 17, with the Nuclear Security Summit in sight, President Aliyev pardoned 14 political prisoners.

“US interests are also at stake. The Azerbaijani offices of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Peace Corps, the National Democratic Institute, IREX, and other US-funded pro-democracy organisations have all been shut down over the past three years. Last year, US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, demanded the release of journalist Khadija Ismayilova, along with other wrongfully imprisoned female human rights activists. But today, Khadija is still in prison, as is opposition leader Ilgar Mammadov, and many others,” Huseynov points out.

He also writes about his brother, photojournalist and blogger Mehman Huseynov, who is trapped in Azerbaijan by a politically-motivated travel ban, stemming from an altercation he had with a police officer in May 2012.

“My dear friend and colleague Rasim Aliyev paid the ultimate price for exposing the Aliyev regime’s brutal repression. Rasim was killed last August, and, though the circumstances of his death are unclear, I believe he was targeted because of his work. He is the fifth journalist to be killed since President Aliyev came to power,” Huseynov points out.

According to the Caucasian Knot, Azerbaijani experts think the authorities are forced to improve their relations with the West amid a sharp drop of oil prices. They expect politician Ilgar Mammadov and journalist Khadija Ismayilova’s release after Aliyev returns from the US. 

“The sharp drop of the country’s income as a result of the reduction of oil prices forces the government to look for new sources of foreign financial loans. Resources are also needed for carrying out key energetic projects like the Southern Gas Corridor. These resources can be accessed from international financial institutions but the relations with the West must be improved for that,” Mehman Aliyev, the head of Turan news agency and member of the Civil Society Defence Committee, told the Caucasian Knot.  

According to the expert, the partial solution of the political prisoners problem was also conditioned by the Azerbaijan Democracy Act worked out by the head of the Helsinki Commission of the US Congress. The Act offers imposing sanctions on high-ranking officials and law enforcement representatives.

Aliyev argues that the authorities of Azerbaijan decided to step into a dialogue with the US under the threat of the sanctions. Rights defender Intigam Aliyev was released on the eve of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.

In addition, Azerbaijani experts say there is a high risk of a new devaluation of the national currency in the country. President Ilham Aliyev said in February that changes would be introduced into the state budget to correct the document basing on 25$ oil price per barrel, as opposed to the 50$ set initially.

Anar Mammadli, a former political prisoner, who chairs the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre, said the authorities of Azerbaijan are going to face international criticism as long as there are political prisoners in the country. “It is a shame for us that in the 21^st century, people are persecuted for dissent and political activities. That is why the civil society must consolidate with the international organisations to achieve the release of the political prisoners in Azerbaijan,” Mammadli said.

According to Turan, Mammadli, who was pardoned on March 17, told the Voice of America that the conditions of the colony were oppressive with the convicts’ rights being violated. “The press was a very big problem. Even after subscribing to this or that newspaper, we could receive it with difficulty,” he highlighted and added that they were not given newspaper for days or certain articles were being cut out of them. It was necessary to explain the convicts their rights, however, most of them did not use those rights.

Comparing the situation with the NGOs in the country before and after his release, Mammadli said that the current work is “equal to a null” because the civil society has significantly weakened. “We seem to have gone back to the USSR – bank accounts are frozen, international donor organisations have the status of an enemy of the state, NGOs’ state registration is impossible,” Mammadli pointed out.