LEYLA YUNU

Leyla Yunus has been in pretrial detention for nearly three months.
She says she has been beaten and denied medical care for diabetes and other ailments.

By Shahnaz Huseynova and Daisy Sindelar October 20, 2014

On October 21, the European Parliament will announce the 17th annual Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought, a distinction that comes with a 50,000 euro award ($64,000) and entry to a select club of some of the world's most respected human rights defenders.

In the case of Leyla Yunus, one of this year's finalists, the prize holds another potential benefit: pressure on the Azerbaijani court system, which is set this week to determine if the 58-year old activist will remain behind bars to face trial on charges -- dismissed by supporters as bogus -- of treason and espionage.

Yunus, the head of the Baku-based Institute for Peace and Democracy and an outspoken government critic, has already spent nearly three months in pretrial detention, where she complained of being physically beaten and denied medical care for diabetes and other ailments. 

On October 20, authorities appeared to ratchet up the pressure by abruptly transferring Yunus to a detention facility run by the Ministry of National Security, which is notorious for use of torture and other coercive tactics. Yunus's 59-year-old husband, Arif -- a well-known historian and activist in his own right -- is being held in the same facility on charges similar to hers. 

The unexpected transfer is seen as an attempt to further isolate Yunus, and comes just days before a court hearing on whether to extend her pretrial detention. The remand hearing is scheduled to be held this week, although an exact date has not been set. 

By law, Security Ministry officials are required to explain the need for a transfer before any move is made. But lawyer Alayif Hasanov told RFE/RL that he received no prior notification about the relocation. 

"The officials are meant to provide both us and the person being transferred with an explanation for the transfer and whether it's a matter of urgency," Hasanov said. "Based on that explanation, we can determine how reasonable or urgent the transfer was. But there's been no explanation."

Yunus's legal team expressed concern that the ministry's tighter restrictions on food and medicine deliveries may further compromise Yunus's health. Lawyer Khalid Bagirov expressed cautious hope that a positive announcement from the European Parliament could bring pressure to bear on authorities in Baku. 

"The Sakharov Prize is one of the most serious prizes in Europe, but I can't say how seriously the Azerbaijani government views it," he said. "I want to hope that if she's awarded the Sakharov Prize, Leyla Yunus will be set free." 

'Track Two' Diplomacy

Yunus, who has taken on corruption, domestic violence, and unlawful evictions over the course of her career, has run afoul of the Azerbaijani government more than once. But her current charges -- linked to her work promoting so-called "track two" diplomacy, or person-to-person contact, between Azerbaijan and archenemy Armenia -- are especially grave, and could carry a sentence of 15 years to life if Yunus is convicted. 

The Yunuses' arrests come amid a sweeping crackdown in Azerbaijan against journalists, lawyers, and other government critics. In recent months, the oil-rich regime of President Ilham Aliyev has arrested at least 11 activists on political charges despite assuming the rotating chairmanship of the Council of Europe, the European region's foremost human rights body, in May. 

Advocacy groups have slammed the government case against the Yunuses. In an October 18 press release, Human Rights Watch called on authorities to immediately release the couple and drop the charges against them, denouncing the case as "a travesty and a clear attempt by the Azerbaijan government to silence them with bogus charges." 

Yunus, who has published several open letters to her husband since their detention, has written passionately about the government's campaign, and has expressed mounting fear that she and her husband, who suffers from heart disease, may not live to see their release. 

In her latest letter, published the same day as her transfer, she wrote, "I clearly understand their goal is not just destruction, but brutal torture, insults, and physical torment, when death becomes the desired escape from the terrible suffering. This is our reality, and I clearly realize it. In other words, our work received the highest mark on the highest scale." 

The international community has traditionally offered only mild criticism of Baku's rights record, prompting allegations that Azerbaijan is using its energy riches to peddle influence abroad. 

Notable exceptions include the European Court of Human Rights, which on October 11 granted priority status to the Yunuses' case against their arrest, and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which on October 15 ordered Azerbaijan to undergo a review of its civil society standards by the start of 2015. 

The couple's daughter, Dinara, who has lived in Amsterdam since receiving political asylum in the Netherlands, says the Sakharov Prize could help provide additional leverage against the Aliyev regime. 

"It might have an influence on her case, and it would also show the world what's really going on in Azerbaijan and how many political prisoners there are," she says. "I'm afraid that if she doesn't win, she won't have that protection from the Europarliament. The Sakharov Prize would give her protection in front of the Azeri government."

Yunus, who was nominated for the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament's Green Party faction, is considered a dark horse in the race, where Ukraine's Euromaidan protest movement and Denis Mukwege, a doctor crusading against rape in the Congo, have been backed by larger factions. 

The fates of past Sakharov laureates, however, indicate that the prize is not always accompanied by better conditions at home. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader, received the Sakharov Prize in 1990 but was only able to collect the award after her release from house arrest 20 years later. 

Other Sakharov prize-winners continue to face oppression, including the Belarusian Association of Journalists, Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, and the Russian rights group Memorial -- founded and led by Sakharov himself -- which is facing current efforts by the Justice Ministry to liquidate its operations. 

Source: http://www.rferl.org/

NOT GONE AWAY

While the eyes of the world have been distracted by events in Hong Kong, eastern Ukraine and the Middle East, Russia has continued to apply pressure to the Crimean Tartar minority in the Crimea. There have been documented attacks on Tartar leaders, on-going harassment, raids on houses and flats have taken place; records and documents have been taken and passports confiscated and libraries have been shut down.

Nadir Bekir (pictured here in 2013) says four masked men pulled him from his
car, forced him to the ground, and took his Ukrainian passport and mobile phone.

Crimean Tatar Scholar Attacked, Library Shut As Pressure Mounts

SIMFEROPOL, Crimea -- A Crimean Tatar scholar says masked assailants dragged him from his car and took his passport in an attack meant to prevent him from attending a UN conference in New York.

The attack on Nadir Bekir late on September 18 came hours after Russian authorities moved to seize the Crimean Tatar assembly, the Mejlis, piling pressure on the Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group that largely opposed Moscow's annexation of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine.

On September 19, the main Crimean Tatar library in the regional capital, Simferopol, announced that it is being shut down in accordance with an August government resolution to replace libraries on the peninsula with Russian state entities. 

Bekir, an expert on indigenous peoples, told RFE/RL he was attacked on his way from Simferopol to the city of Dzhankoi, where he planned to board a train for Kyiv and then fly to New York.

He said a white minibus abruptly blocked his car on the highway. Four masked men emerged, pulled him from his car, forced him to the ground, and took his Ukrainian passport and mobile phone. He said one of the attackers opened his passport and told the others: "Yes, that 's him!"

Without his passport, Bekir said he cannot leave Crimea. He believes the attack was meant to prevent him from participating in the September 22-23 UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, part of the UN General Assembly. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin promised that the rights of Crimean Tatars would be protected after Moscow annexed the region in March, a move opposed by most Crimean Tatars and denounced as illegitimate by Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States.

But tension quickly mounted and pressure on the Crimean Tatars intensified after most members of the Turkic-speaking minority group, which makes up about 12 percent of the peninsula's population, boycotted local elections on September 14.

Police confiscated records of the Crimean Tatar's Mejlis as well as religious books, computers, and
personal belongings of long-time Crimean Tatar leader and Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Dzhemilev.

Houses and apartments of leading members of the Crimean Tatar community, as well as the Mejlis offices, were searched by police and unidentified masked, armed men on September 16-17.  

In the Mejlis, police confiscated records of the Crimean Tatar self-governing body's sessions as well as religious books, computers, and personal belongings of long-time Crimean Tatar leader and Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Dzhemilev.

Dzhemilev is a well-known Soviet-era human rights activist who served six sentences in Soviet prison camps from 1966 to 1986.

Earlier this year, Russian authorities barred Dzhemilev and the chairman of the Mejlis, Refat Chubarov, from entering Crimea, saying their activities "incite interethnic hatred."

The pressure on Crimean Tatars is a source of particular bitterness because the community was deported en masse to Central Asia in 1944 by the authorities under Josef Stalin, who accused them of collaborating with Nazi Germany.

Many of the 200,000 deportees died on their way into exile.

Many Crimean Tatars returned to Crimea in the years before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and there have been frequent disputes over land and property on the peninsula, which are aggravated by ethnic differences between the Crimean Tatars and the Slavic population.

After Russia annexed Crimea, Putin publicly said that the rights of Crimean Tatars will be fully protected by Russian laws and signed a decree on the rehabilitation of peoples deported from Crimea in the 1940s. 

But in May, the United Nations voiced concern about what it called the "serious problems" of harassment and persecution of Crimean Tatars since the annexation.

By RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service and RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service

Last updated (GMT/UTC): 19.09.2014 11:30