WUNRN
AZERBAIJAN
– GLOBAL APPEAL TO RELEASE LEYLA YUNUS, DEFENDER OF WOMEN, HUMAN RIGHTS,
11-YEAR SENTENCE PENDING
Azerbaijan
Serious Crackdown on Human Rights Defenders, Critics of Government, Political
& Civil Activists, Journalists +
FIDH
– International Federation for Human Rights - https://www.fidh.org/International-Federation-for-Human-Rights/eastern-europe-central-asia/azerbaijan/azerbaijan-prosecutor-requests-outrageous-jail-sentences-for-leyla
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The IPGA is a coalition of international
organisations working to promote and protect freedom of expression in
Azerbaijan. http://azerbaijanfreexpression.org/campaigns/impunity/detained-since-2014-leyla-yunus/
One of Azerbaijan’s most prominent human rights activists and director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy in Baku. The organisation, which is a member of the South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders, participates in numerous human rights activities, including women’s rights and fighting against violation of property rights.
Leyla Yunus – Human Rights Activist Lawyer
Wrongfully Detained in Azerbaijan since 2014
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
OMCT – World Organization Against Torture - http://www.omct.org/human-rights-defenders/statements/azerbaijan/2015/08/d23307/
PRESS RELEASE - THE OBSERVATORY
AZERBAIJAN:
Prosecutor Requests Outrageous Jail Sentences for Leyla Yunus & Husband
Paris-Geneva, August 7, 2015 – Yesterday the fourth hearing in the case
against Leyla Yunus and Arif Yunusov took place, and it proved to be yet
another example of how the Azeri regime makes a mockery of justice, the
Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders said today.
On August 6, the Prosecutor asked the Baku Grave Crimes Court to
sentence Leyla Yunus, Director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy
(IPD) and a member of OMCT General Assembly, to 11 years in jail, while 9 years
were requested for her husband Arif Yunusov, Head of the
Conflictology Department of IPD.
The next hearing is scheduled for August 10, when defence lawyers are expected
to make their final plea.
Ms. Yunus is wrongfully accused of large scale fraud (Article 178.3.2 of
the Azerbaijan Criminal Code), fake manufacturing or selling of official
documents (Articles 320.1 and 320.2), large scale tax evasion (Article 213.2.2)
and illegal business with extraction of income in large size (Article 192.2.1).
Mr. Yunusov is accused of large-scale fraud (Article 178.3.2).
“Since the end of the Baku Games, the repression against critic voices
amongst the Azeri civil society has intensified. Authorities have recently
confirmed harsh jail sentences for human rights defenders such as Rasul Jafarov
and Intigam Aliyev, in speedy appeal hearings. We fear that Leyla and Arif will
face the same fate”. FIDH
Honorary President Souhayr Belhassen said today. “Shamelessly, Azerbaijan
is fast moving towards a full-blown dictatorship”.
On July 27, around 25 local and international observers and journalists
were prevented from entering the courtroom, including the Observatory's
judicial observer, a number of diplomats, as well as journalists from the BBC,
to mention a few. The hearing was held in the smallest courtroom in the
Courthouse, although some of the larger ones were available at the time. The
same happened in the hearing of August 3.
“We are dismayed about this new trend which is extremely evident
in the hearings following the European Games, namely denying international
observers access to the courtroom or undermining their effective independent
monitoring presence by not allowing in their interpreters, which amounts to a
serious violation of the principles of transparency and publicity of judicial
debates”, OMCT Secretary General Gerald Staberock added.
Similar limitations have recently taken place in the trials against
other emblematic human rights defenders, such as the first hearing in the case
of investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, as well as the appeal
hearings in the case against Rasul Jafarov.
Our organisations call on the Azerbaijan authorities to put an end to
this crackdown on civil society and to release all human rights defenders
detained in the country, including Leyla and Arif Yunus.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
From: WUNRN LISTSERVE
[mailto:Wunrn1@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2014 11:33 AM
To: WUNRN ListServe <WUNRN_LISTSERVE@lists.wunrn.com>
Subject: Azerbaijan Gets Tough to Silence Woman Leader, Defender of
Rights & Justice
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."