WUNRN
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders,
is a joint programme of FIDH, the International Federation for Human Rights and
OMCT, the World Organization Against Torture.
PRESS RELEASE - THE OBSERVATORY
Azerbaijan: Extreme Concern about Human Rights Defender Activist, Ms. Leyla Yunus’ Deteriorating Health in Prolonged Detention. The International Community Must React Urgently!
Geneva-Paris, November 27, 2014 – The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, an OMCT-FIDH joint programme, is extremely concerned by recent information on Ms. Leyla Yunus’ deteriorating health, which poses a serious threat to her life. The Observatory calls on the international community to strongly react in order to save her life.
Following seven months of ongoing and increasing harassment against Ms. Leyla Yunus, member of the OMCT General Assembly, including arbitrary detention, judicial harassment, denial of medical care, attacks in prison and a temporary transfer to the Investigative Prison of the Ministry of National Security, her health has been rapidly deteriorating, and is now posing a serious threat to her life. Ms. Yunus is no longer able to eat, can hardly move and recent blood tests have revealed her liver was decaying. Moreover, Ms. Yunus has lost significant weight, from 61 kg before her arrest to 48 kg presently. Nils Muižnieks, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, managed to meet Ms. Leyla Yunus in prison in late October, and confirmed that her state was extremely serious and that she cried throughout the meeting.
Ms. Leyla Yunus was arrested on July 30, 2014, and has remained in pre-trial detention since then, on charges of “high treason” (Article 274 of the Criminal Code), “large-scale fraud” (Article (178.3.2), “forgery” (Article 320), “tax evasion” (Article 213), and “illegal business” (Article 192) (for more information, see in particular the Observatory Urgent Appeal AZE 002 / 0414 / OBS 031.3 of September 12, 2014). High treason can trigger 12 to 20 years' imprisonment for women, and 12 to 20 years' or life imprisonment for men. On August 5, 2014, the court eventually decided to also place Mr. Arif Yunusov in pre-trial detention for three months. Their detention was subsequently extended to February 2015. Although the health of Ms. Leyla Yunus has deteriorated while in detention, the prison authorities in Kurdakhany detention facility did not allow her to receive parcels with medication she needs for her diabetes and kidneys problems.Following a visit from delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on August 12, 2014, she finally got her painkiller-injections, but was not allowed to be hospitalised.
On September 6, 2014, Ms. Leyla Yunus was attacked and verbally harassed by her cellmate. However, no measure was taken to either punish the cellmate nor to ensure the protection of Ms. Leyla Yunus.
The Observatory calls upon the authorities in Azerbaijan to ensure Ms. Leyla Yunus’ physical and psychological integrity by immediately putting an end to her pre-trial detention and by providing her with immediate and adequate medical care. The Observatory further requests that Ms. Yunus be immediately and unconditionally released, as her detention seems to only aim at sanctioning her activities amidst a wave of increasing repression against civil society organisations and representatives in Azerbaijan.
Finally the Observatory calls on the international community to take immediate action and to increase the pressure on the Azeri authorities in order to save the life of Ms. Leyla Yunus.
For more information, please contact:
· FIDH: Audrey Couprie/Arthur Manet: + 33 (0) 1 43 55 25 18
· OMCT: Miguel Martín
Zumalacárregui: + 41 (0) 22 809 49 24
WUNRN
AZERBAIJAN GETS TOUGH TO SILENCE WOMAN LEADER, DEFENDER OF RIGHTS & JUSTICE
Leyla Yunus in a photo from a protest.
By Robert Coalson and Ilkin Mammadov - July 31, 2014
Leyla Yunus of Azerbaijan is not one to keep quiet. In a video posted in April, the 58-year-old activist stands outside a Baku police station shouting as loudly as possible that she was detained for hours without being allowed to eat and only being allowed to use the restroom in the company of a male police officer.
"This is the way you treat me -- five men can't deal with me, with one woman," she hollers with an intensifying mix of anger and despair. "Five police officers? Was he supposed to be protecting me in the toilet while he was watching me? He was watching me! He was defending me? He is not a decent person!"
Yunus has been shouting truth to power in Azerbaijan for years, earning a reputation as the conscience of her country. But on July 30, after six hours of interrogation, the authorities in Baku charged her with treason, tax evasion, and fraud. Her husband, Arif Yunus, was also arrested and charged with treason and fraud.
The two have been remanded to pretrial detention for 90 days.
International rights advocates are concerned that both could become ill if they are mistreated while in detention. Leyla Yunus has diabetes and Arif was hospitalized with hypertension after the couple endured 24 hours of interrogation and searches in April.
Speaking to RFE/RL's Azerbaijan Service about that ordeal in May, Leyla Yunus said that, given President Ilham Aliyev's record on rights, she "was not even surprised when someone from the prosecutor's office threatened me, an old woman, by saying he would rape my husband with a bottle in front of me and then rape me in front of my husband."
"I have been hearing these stories from other people for more than 30 years," she said. "And now it happened to me."
The authorities seem bent on playing hard ball in this case. A lengthy statement by the prosecutor's office tries to connect the Yunuses with Armenia's secret services and accuses them of providing detailed military information relating to the simmering dispute over Azerbaijan's breakaway ethnic-Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In addition, a scandalous, pornographic website tied to the ruling political party that is notorious for its no-holds-barred harassment campaigns against Azerbaijani journalists and activists has stepped up its campaign against Leyla Yunus. One cartoon on the site shows a scantily clad Yunus speaking on the telephone to U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Richard Morningstar, asking him to "send over another black Congressman" because the one she's already with is impotent.
Fellow rights activist and independent journalist Shahveled Cobanoglu told RFE/RL on July 31 that the arrest of Leyla Yunus "was not unexpected for us."
"For years Leyla Yunus has been criticizing this government on human rights and political prisoners, demanding justice very loudly, telling the truth to society and the international community," Cobanoglu said. "She was not scared of the government. She never gave up. But the government doesn't either."
Leyla Yunus is the director of the Baku-based Institute for Peace and Democracy, which defends political prisoners and exposes corruption and other crimes. It has been particularly active in promoting citizen's diplomacy over Karabakh by fostering exchanges between Azerbaijani and Armenian intellectuals and local leaders.
Yunus has also vocally calling for a boycott of the 2015 EuroOlympic Games, which will be held in Baku and is being actively promoted as a way of polishing Azerbaijan's international image.
The espionage charges apparently are connected with her cooperation with Armenian intellectuals in a bid to reduce tensions between the two countries. Speaking in Washington in April, Ambassador Morningstar called the Yunuses "strong proponents of the Track II process," referring to the program of confidence-building measures set up by the Minsk Group, the international forum for discussing and attempting to resolve the Karabakh conflict. He said that Baku's harassment of the couple is having "a chilling effect on any contact between Azerbaijanis and Armenians."
The fraud charges against the Yunuses stem from the fact that the Azerbaijani government has refused to register the institute as a legal nongovernmental organization. In 2011, the authorities destroyed the building that housed the institute, ostensibly as part of a development project.
The tax charges stem from grants the institute received from organizations such as National Endowment for Democracy, the German Marshall Fund, and the Open Society Institute.
Leyla Yunus's arrest comes just one day after she published a scathing open letter to President Aliyev, in which she criticized him for arresting critical bloggers and activists. "Why are you so scared," she asked him directly, urging him not to go down in history as "a tyrant and a dictator."
Azerbaijan earlier this month marked the 45th anniversary of the Aliyev dynasty. Ilham Aliyev's father, Heydar, was named head of the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan by USSR leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1969.
Speaking to RFE/RL in June, Leyla Yunus had one unambiguous message for the people of her country.
"They should not give up or accept the situation," she said. "They should fight. They should demand their rights."