NEWS IN APRIL 2020
3 April
U.S. calls on all governments to free religious prisoners amid coronavirus pandemic
Sam Brownback
The United States on Thursday called on all governments around the world to release religious prisoners amid the coronavirus pandemic, Turan’s Washington correspondent reports.
Sam Brownback, the State Department’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom, told reporters that he was looking at millions of religious prisoners in China, Iran, Russia and other nations.
“In this time of pandemic, religious prisoners should be released. We call on all governments around the world to do so. It’s a good public health move for their nations and it’s morally obviously the right thing to do,” he said.
North Korea has a very high number, and “we don’t know how many are in their gulag system that they have, and they would be under exceeding exposure to COVID,” he said. Vietnam has 128 prisoners of conscience that are in prison right now, and we call on them to release those prisoners. Russia has nearly around 240 prisoners of conscience, including 34 Jehovah Witnesses.
Asked whether the governments are using the COVID crisis to single out and target religious minorities, Brownback said “fortunately the reporting that we are seeing is that governments are, by and large, not doing that and in some cases being more lenient towards religious minorities, treating them like people instead of like something to desperately oppose and put down. But that’s just anecdotal information. A lot of our posts are limited on what they can get out and see and hear themselves, so this is sort of the reporting that I get back through informal networks of people.”
“This is – one of the good things going on now, if you can find good things, is that it has really brought a much more united humanity together in recognizing we are all in this together. This is all of us. It doesn’t matter what you believe. Everybody is subjected to this attack on humanity. And we’re actually starting to see more relaxing and opening up, and we’re calling for more of it. It needs to take place. You need these governments to work with these religious communities – majority or minority or otherwise – to help distribute aid and get information out,” he added.
According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Azerbaijan systematically violates the freedom of religion or belief. The U.S. religious freedom body has placed the country on its Tier 2 list of countries for engaging in or tolerating religious freedom violations that meet at least one of the elements of the “systematic, ongoing, egregious” standard for designation as a “country of particular concern” since 2013
Currently there are estimated to be 135 political prisoners in Azerbaijan, according to nongovernmental organizations, and more than half of them are religious activists.
6 April
Theologian Faramiz Abbasov has been pardoned and freed
Faramiz Abbasov
On 6 April 2020, the President Ilham Aliyev, issued a decree to pardon a group of prisoners. One of them was the well-known theologian Faramiz Abbasov, who was arrested on 24 January 2011, and sentenced to 11 years imprisonment by the Baku Court of Serious Crimes on 7 October 2011. He was charged under the Articles 28 (Preparation to a crime); 214.2.1 (Preparation of terrorism, committed on preliminary arrangement by group of persons, by organized group or criminal community/organization); 214.2.3 (Preparation of terrorism, committed with application of fire-arms or subjects used as a weapon); 228.3 (Illegal purchase, transfer, selling, storage, transportation and carrying of fire-arms, accessories to it, supplies or explosives, committed by organized group) and 278 (Violent capture power or violent deduction power) of the Criminal Code of the Azerbaijan Republic.
The Azerbaijani human rights defenders considered these charges to be falsified and included Faramiz Abbasov on the list of political prisoners.
13 April
U.S. reiterates calls to Azerbaijan to set religious prisoners free
Sam Brownback
The U.S. religious freedom ambassador on Monday reiterated his calls for release of prisoners of conscience during the new coronavirus pandemic, Turan’s Washington correspondent reports.
“We acknowledge and applaud Azerbaijan’s release of several hundred prisoners in light of #COVID19. We call on Azerbaijan and other countries to immediately release all those incarcerated for exercising their fundamental freedoms, including #religiousprisoners, during this pandemic,” Sam Brownback, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom noted in a tweet.
The move comes just a week after the Trump administration called on governments around the world to “immediately release hundreds of thousands if not millions of prisoners who have been jailed for peacefully practicing their religion.”
The U.S. religious freedom body USCIRF, which is in charge of forming the list, had previously placed Azerbaijan among Tier 2 countries for engaging in or tolerating religious freedom violations that meet at least one of the elements of the “systematic, ongoing, egregious” standard for designation as a “country of particular concern”.
16 April
“You don’t want that blood on your hands” – U.S. asks Azerbaijan to release more prisoners
Sam Brownback
For the third time in less than two weeks, the U.S. religious freedom ambassador on Wednesday called for the release of prisoners of conscience around the world, in the wake of the COVID pandemic, Turan’s Washington correspondent reports.
Speaking to reporters during a virtual briefing organized by the State Department’s Foreign Press Center, Sam Brownback, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, emphasized that Azerbaijan has released 176 prisoners as a preventive health measure, adding, “but we call on them to immediately release all of those incarcerated for exercising their fundamental freedoms, including religious prisoners”.
When asked whether he anticipated the Azerbaijani government would release additional religious prisoners, of which the majority are MUM members who have already faced difficult conditions and torture, Brownback told Turan’s Washington correspondent the followings:
“I applauded Azerbaijan for releasing a number of their prisoners and some of the political and religious prisoners that they released. We are asking and I anticipate they will do more as we continue to point these cases out and the importance of doing this and the fact, too, that these governments don’t want these people to die in prison because of the COVID virus when they’re there for religious or political purposes. You don’t want that blood on your hands, and that’s why we continue to ask them to do that.”
The call for the release of non-violent prisoners of conscience is not unusual in these pretty uncertain times. Brownback’s comments underscored that religious prisoners in countries afflicted by the pandemic are at a high risk of contracting the infectious disease and being left to die by the governments oppressing them.
In the meantime, he added,
“We are seeing some countries release religious prisoners because of the COVID-19 crisis, because of the public health concern, because it’s the right thing to do, because it’s the right thing for their country not to keep people, religious prisoners, in prison in the first place…”
“They shouldn’t be there in the first place, but also and on top of that, in light of this crisis, this is a key time that they should allow these people out who shouldn’t be in prison in the first place, and shouldn’t be then subjected to this worse environment for the spread of the virus within a crowded prison, unsanitary situation,” he added.
“It’s our hope that a number of countries will look at this and say, this is something we don’t want to expose these people to, that we want to let them out. It is good for our own country’s public health, and that we’ll see more of these religious prisoners being released in the coming days,” he said.
25 April
The political prisoner Elshan Abbasov has been released from prison
Elshan Abbasov
On 25 April 2020, Elshan Abbasov, a well-known member of the “Muslim Unity” Movement and a believer from the town of Barda, was released from the prison upon completion of his term of imprisonment. When he left the penal colony No. 16 he was greeted by a large group of believers.
It is not for the first time that Elshan Abbasov has been punished by the authorities for his active work. In May 2011, he participated in a rally of believers protesting in front of the Ministry of Education, when they demanded the abolition of the ban on the hijab in schools. Then he was arrested and sentenced to 2-year-imprisonement on charges of public disorder. Upon his release, he participated in trials and rallies in support of the arrested “Muslim Unity” Movement members. Finally, on 27 October 2017, he was arrested again, no sanction and no witnesses, on charges relating to the violation of the Articles 228 (Illegal purchase, transfer, selling, storage, transportation and carrying of fire-arms, accessories to it, supplies, explosives) and 234.4.3 (Illegal manufacturing, purchase, storage, transportation, transfer or selling of narcotics, psychotropic substances, committed on preliminary arrangement by group of persons or organized group in large amount) of the Criminal Code of the Azerbaijan Republic.
On 30 June 2018 the Masally District Court sentenced to 2 years and 6 months in prison.
29 April
U.S. Religious Body Pitches Adding Azerbaijan to State Department’s Special Watch List
The U.S. religious freedom body USCIRF recommends Azerbaijan be added to the State Department’s Special Watch (SW) List meaning it engages in 2 of 3 international standards of “systematic,” “ongoing,” and “egregious” religious freedom violations, Turan’s Washington correspondent reports.
The bipartisan commission, created in 1998 to make policy recommendations to the U.S. President, Secretary of State and Congress about global religious freedom, has been including Azerbaijan on its “Tier 2” list for religious freedom violations every year since 2013.
In its 21st annual report issued on Tuesday in Washington D.C. the USCIRF, instead of using its own “Tier 2” category, decided to recommend 15 countries, including Azerbaijan, for placement on the Special Watch List for severe violations. Other countries on the SW list include: Cuba, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Central African Republic, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and Turkey.
According to the USCIRF, although in 2019, religious freedom conditions in Azerbaijan “trended positively”, as the government largely ceased conducting raids on religious communities and reduced its longstanding practice of detaining and fining individuals in connection with the unauthorized, peaceful practice of their religion or beliefs, as well as pardoned 51 political and religious prisoners, it also continued to exert undue control and oversight over all religious communities and their activities.
“Government officials continued to manage and limit religious practices through the 2009 Law on Freedom of Religion and related articles of the administrative and criminal codes.”
According to nongovernmental organizations, tracking political prisoners in the country, as many as 45 religious activists remained incarcerated at the end of the year. Sardar Babayev, a Shi’a Muslim imam sentenced in 2017 for illegally leading Islamic ceremonies after having received a foreign religious education, remained imprisoned through the end of 2019.
The majority of prisoners of conscience in Azerbaijan comprise members of the Muslim Unity Movement (MUM). A 2019 PACE report highlighted the continued imprisonment of MUM leaders Tale Bagirzade and Abbas Huseynov and noted that they and others associated with MUM had reported being tortured. In response to “unprecedented pressure” in early 2019, Bagirzade and Huseynov went on a hunger strike and were reportedly denied access to their lawyers and families.
“Local human rights activists maintained that the government had targeted and detained tens of individuals in connection with violence in the city of Ganja in 2018 as part of its effort to “start repressions against believers,” and they expressed concern that those detainees were also at risk for torture,” reads the report.
In another major recommendation to the U.S. government, the Commission urges Washington to work with Baku to revise the 2009 religion law to comply with international human rights standards, and bring it into conformity with recommendations made in 2012 by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission and the OSCE.
The report also recommends the U.S. Congress to hold public hearings to investigate Azerbaijan’s religious freedom and broader human rights abuses, including its treatment of the MUM; raise related concerns directly with the Azerbaijani Embassy and other government officials; and advocate for the release of all prisoners of conscience.