According to human rights groups, the Azerbaijani government is using COP29 to crack down on environmental activists and other political opponents, the BBC writes.
Climate Action Network, a group of nearly 2,000 climate groups, told BBC News the protection of civil society is crucial if countries want to see progress on climate change.
Natalia Nozadze from Amnesty International told BBC News that since Azerbaijan was announced as the host country for COP29 in November last year it has become harder to oppose the government.
Gubad Ibadoglu, a 53-year old professor at London university LSE, researches Azerbaijan’s oil and gas sectors and environmental issues but in summer 2023 he was arrested on charges of fraud. “I think it is one of the rules of the authoritarian government, to arrest, to detain the people who have the power to impact opinion,” Ibadoglu told the BBC in an interview this week. He says his life is in danger due to health reasons.
“COP29 – which was meant to be an open and inclusive platform for climate action – is shaping up to be anything but,” a close friend of Mr Mammadli, Bashir Suleymanli, told the BBC.
“Civil society groups that should be playing a crucial role in holding governments accountable have been sidelined or repressed,” he said.
“I think it’s a big mistake for countries – like Azerbaijan or United Arab Emirates or Egypt – who systematically violate human rights, to be accepted as eligible host countries,” said Azerbaijani journalist and environmental campaigner Emin Huseynov.
The IPI global network is alarmed by the repression of independent journalists in Azerbaijan, the recent scale of which is unsettling even in the context of the country’s grim political reality. The intensity of this repression – and the impunity for violence against journalists – is all the more striking as the COP29 global climate conference continues this week in Baku. IPI Interim Executive Director Scott Griffen said, “The United States, EU member states, and all other countries that are members of the Media Freedom Coalition should at the very least use this opportunity to speak up in defense of independent journalists and media in the country.”
