Two recent disturbing events may finally awaken the world to the scale and horror of the atrocities being committed against the Uighurs, a mostly secular Muslim ethnic minority, in Xinjiang, China. One is an authoritative report documenting the systematic sterilization of Uighur women. The other was the seizure by U.S. Customs and Border Protection of 13 tons of products made from human hair suspected of being forcibly removed from Uighurs imprisoned in concentration camps. Both events evoke chilling parallels to past atrocities elsewhere, forced sterilization of minorities, disabled, and Indigenous people, and the image of the glass display of mountains of hair preserved at Auschwitz. The Genocide Convention, to which China is a signatory, defines genocide as specific acts against members of a group with the intent to destroy that group in whole or in part. These acts include (a) killing; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm; (c) deliberately inflicting conditions of life to bring about the group’s physical destruction; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Any one of these categories constitutes genocide. The overwhelming evidence of the Chinese government’s deliberate and systematic campaign to destroy the Uighur people clearly meets each of these categories. Over a million Turkic Uighurs are detained in concentration camps, prisons, and forced labor factories in China. Detainees are subject to military-style discipline, thought transformation, and forced confessions. They are abused, tortured, raped, and even killed. Survivors report being subjected to electrocution, waterboarding, repeated beatings, stress positions, and injections of unknown substances. These mass detention camps are designed to cause serious physical, psychological harm and mentally break the Uighur people. The repeated government orders to “break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins”; “round up everyone who should be rounded up”; and systematically prevent Uighur births demonstrate a clear intent to eradicate the Uighur people as a whole. Ekpar Asat (brother of one of the present authors) is an emblematic example of how Uighurs are targeted regardless of their recognition as model Chinese citizens by the Communist Party. Asat was praised by the government for his community leadership as a “bridge builder” and “positive force” between ethnic minorities and the Xinjiang local government. But Asat still suffered the same fate as over a million other Uighurs and disappeared into the shadows of the concentration camps in 2016. He is held incommunicado and is reported to be serving a 15-year sentence on the trumped-up charge of “inciting ethnic hatred.” Not a single court document is available about his case. In 2017, Xinjiang waged a brutal “Special Campaign to Control Birth Control Violations,” along with specific local directives. By 2019, the government planned to subject over 80 percent of women of childbearing age in southern Xinjiang to forced intrauterine devices (IUDs) and sterilization. The goal is to achieve “zero birth control violation incidents.” Government documents reveal a campaign of mass female sterilization supported by state funding to carry out hundreds of thousands of sterilizations in 2019 and 2020. This goes far beyond the scale, per capita, of forced sterilization inflicted on women throughout China under the past one-child policy. To implement these policies, the Xinjiang government employed “dragnet-style” investigations to hunt down women of childbearing age. Once apprehended, these women have no choice but to undergo forced sterilization to avoid being sent to an internment camp. Once detained, women face forced injections, abortions, and unknown drugs. And statistics show that the government is meeting its birth prevention goals. Between 2015 and 2018, population growth rates in the Uighur heartland plummeted by 84 percent. Conversely, official documents show that sterilization rates skyrocketed in Xinjiang while plunging throughout the rest of China, and the funding for these programs is only increasing. Between 2017 and 2018, in one district, the percentage of women who were infertile or widowed increased by 124 percent and 117 percent, respectively. In 2018, 80 percent of all IUD placements in China were performed in Xinjiang despite accounting for a mere 1.8 percent of China’s population. These IUDs can be removed only by state-approved surgery—or else prison terms will follow. In Kashgar, only about 3 percent of married women of childbearing age gave birth in 2019. The latest annual reports from some of these regions have begun omitting birth rate information altogether to conceal the scale of destruction. The government has shut down its entire online platform after these revelations. The scale and scope of these measures are clearly designed to halt Uighur births. With Uighur men detained and women sterilized, the government has laid the groundwork for the physical destruction of the Uighur people. At least half a million of the remaining Uighur children have been separated from their families and are being raised by the state at so-called “children shelters.” What makes this genocide so uniquely dangerous is its technological sophistication, allowing for efficiency in its destruction and concealment from global attention. The Uighurs have been suffering under the most advanced police state, with extensive controls and restrictions on every aspect of life—religious, familial, cultural, and social. To facilitate surveillance, Xinjiang operates under a grid management system. Cities and villages are split into squares of about 500 people. Each square has a police station that closely monitors inhabitants by regularly scanning their identification cards, faces, DNA samples, fingerprints, and cell phones. These methods are supplemented by a machine-operated system known as the Integrated Joint Operations Platform. The system uses machine learning to collect personal data from video surveillance, smartphones, and other private records to generate lists for detention. Over a million Han Chinese watchers have been installed in Uighur households, rendering even intimate spaces subject to the government’s eye. The Chinese government operates the most intrusive mass surveillance system in the world and repeatedly denies the international community meaningful access to it. It is therefore incumbent on us to appreciate the nature, depth, and speed of the genocide and act now before it’s too late. Recognizing or refusing to name this a genocide will be a matter of life or death. In 1994, by the time U.S. officials were done debating the applicability of the term to the situation in Rwanda, nearly a million Tutsis had already been slaughtered. A document dated May 1, 1994, at the height of the genocide, by an official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense stated: “Genocide finding could commit [the U.S. government] to actually ‘do something.’” Four years later, President Bill Clinton stood before Rwandan survivors and reflected on his administration’s historic failure and vowed: “Never again must we be shy in the face of the evidence.” With the passing of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, the U.S. government has begun to take steps in the right direction to avoid another human catastrophe. Seventy-eight members of Congress have followed up with a call for the administration to impose Magnitsky sanctions on the responsible Chinese officials and issue a formal declaration of the atrocity crimes, including genocide. So far, the administration has officially imposed Magnitsky sanctions on four Chinese officials and an entity in charge of the Orwellian surveillance system and responsible for the expansion of the internment camps in Xinjiang. The U.S. government must now make an official determination of genocide. This will not be difficult, as U.S. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus has already asserted that “what has happened to the Uighur people … is potentially the worst crime that we have seen since the Holocaust.” A formal declaration of genocide is not simply symbolic. It will catalyze other countries to join in a concerted effort to end the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang. It will also prompt consumers to reject the over 80 international brands that profit off genocide. Furthermore, the determination will strengthen legal remedies for sanctioning companies that profit from modern slavery in their supply chains sourced in China and compel business entities to refrain from profiting from genocide and commit to ethical sourcing. In our interconnected world, we are not only bystanders if we fail to recognize the genocide as we see it. We are complicit. © Foreign Policy 2020

The arrest of Maya K’iche’ journalist Anastasia Mejía exposes the Central American country’s ongoing assault on press freedom. November 2, 2020 Anastasia Mejía was released from jail to house arrest last week. (Carlos Choc, Prensa Comunitaria) For 37 days, Maya K’iche’ journalist Anastasia Mejía was held in detention at a women’s prison on the outskirts of Quetzaltenango, a small city in Western Guatemala. The National Police detained Mejía on September 22 and charged her with sedition, aggravated attack, arson, and aggravated robbery. She now faces three months on house arrest, after local organizations raised funds to pay her bail. Mejía is the director of the local outlets Xol Abaj Radio and Xol Abaj TV. Mejía’s case is symptomatic of the Guatemalan state’s troubled relationship with the press. She is the latest in a series of Indigenous journalists criminalized for their work. Many journalists have been arrested, threatened, and murdered. Public officials openly criticize journalists and consider them “guilty by association” for reporting on protest movements. A month prior to her arrest, Mejía was working in the town of Joyabaj. The 49-year-old was reporting on protests against the mayor and his management of the Covid-19 crisis. Joyabaj vendors had gathered in opposition to mayor Florencio Carrascosa’s proposed relocation of the town’s market, which has been closed to deter the spread of the coronavirus. Protestors claimed the relocation would not prevent losses and was of no benefit to the businesses that relied on the market. The mayor had also come under fire for alleged favoritism in the distribution of government support packages to alleviate the impact of the pandemic in the community. Tensions quickly boiled over, and the crowd of protestors raided the Joyabaj town hall, tossing furniture and documents onto the street and setting them ablaze. All the while, Mejía stood by and reported on the events as they unfolded. Over the course of several hours, she live-streamed the protests on Xol Abaj TV’s Facebook page. This action lead to her unwarranted imprisonment. Guilty by Association "What we'll often see is that rural or Indigenous reporters that are covering protests, confrontations, or conflicts will get lumped in with whatever actions are going on there, and then they'll be facing ridiculous charges,” says Natalie Southwick, Central and South America Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. Southwick says the Guatemalan government’s approach of deeming journalists guilty by association is a gateway to abuse its power and undermine national laws. “Defamation laws are a common way to use the legal system to go after journalists. This is a tactic that is not unique to Guatemala, but it's used there more than we see in other countries,” says Southwick. Guatemalan law stipulates that anyone arrested must receive an initial hearing on their case within 24 hours of their arrest. Mejía’s first hearing was on October 8, 16 days after her arrest. The Joyabaj mayor and Mejía share a fraught history, which many believe is the driving force behind Carrascosa’s persecution of the journalist. In 2015, Mejía was elected as a councilor at the town hall, which Carrascosa has presided over as mayor since 2008. The pair share personal and political differences, with Carrascosa claiming Mejía attempted to oust him, while Mejía went as far as suing Carrascosa over suspicions of corruption. Carrascosa is reported to have amassed 24 official complaints against him while serving as Joyabaj mayor, including cases of violence against women, illicit funding, embezzlement, and fraud. The delayed hearing allowed the Joyabaj municipality to prolong Mejía’s time in detention. A series of obstacles emerged in Mejía’s path towards justice, from Covid-19 to missing legal accreditation from Carrascosa’s defense. Mejía was due to testify via video from the detention center in Quetzaltenango, though the court was not able to establish connection with the center and the hearing was postponed until October 28, 36 days after her arrest. Mejía arriving at the hearing on October 28, 2020. (Carlos Choc/Prensa Comunitaria) The outcome of Mejía’s hearing echoes the troubled relationship between the Guatemala government, Indigenous communities, and the press. The court hearing on October 28 upheld the charges against Mejía and ordered an investigation into the journalist. The judge placed Mejía under house arrest and imposed a 20,000 Guatemalan Quetzal ($2,567) bail, as well as denying her the right to practice journalism until the following hearing. The second hearing is scheduled for nearly three months from now, on January 11, 2021. Additionally, Mejía was forced to spend the night at the men’s prison of Santa Cruz del Quiché, after the state penitentiary’s transport reportedly left her and fellow detainees behind. A day after the hearing, local organizations raised the funds to pay for her bail, and Mejía was released from the detention center and placed under house arrest for the coming months. State Attacks on the Press Since 1992, 25 journalists and media workers have been killed in Guatemala, with the most recent fatality registered in February this year, when Bryan Guerra, a reporter at the cable news channel TLCOM, was shot dead in the city of Chiquimula. In 2019, the humanitarian organization Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Guatemala registered 104 attacks against journalists. So far in 2020, the Association of Guatemalan Journalists has recorded over 110 attacks against members of the press. “Freedom of speech is not a right exclusive to journalists, it’s a right of the people. If they silence the press, they silence the people,” says Miguel Ángel Albizures, President of the Association of Guatemalan Journalists. Government disdain toward the press is by no means a new occurrence in Guatemala. The last Guatemalan President, Jimmy Morales, was openly hostile towards the press and often attacked publications and journalists critical of his administration, as well as intimidating journalists and barring them from press conferences. His successor, Alejandro Giammatei, took office in January this year. Many Guatemalan journalists hoped he would usher in a new age of press freedom. Giammatei, however, has drastically fallen short of the mark, and many Guatemalan journalists believe he holds a tighter grip on the press than Morales did before him. “People have always had hope [for a freer press], but it crumbles with the start of each new government,” says Albizures. “We’ve been waiting for a change for a long time, and the people were tired of Morales’ attitude towards the press.” Shortly after winning the election, Giammatei labelled the news outlet Nómada as “specialists in discrediting,” as well as proposing a platform of centralized press releases, which would have enabled the government to filter and manage the flow of information. Nómada has since folded, citing financial instability, though its founder was also facing allegations of sexual misconduct. Giammatei has also kept a close eye on journalists investigating his administration. In September, journalist Sonny Figueroa was arrested in relation to his reporting on government corruption. Previously, Giammatei had also demanded the investigative journalist Marvin Del Cid reveal who was telling him to investigate his administration. “Since taking office Giammatei has held a direct attack towards the press, especially those outlets that don’t align themselves with the government’s agenda,” says Nelton Rivera, an investigative journalist at Prensa Comunitaria. “The government is uncomfortable and annoyed that there is a right that allows citizens to learn, find out, and uncover information, which in turn allows them to make their own decisions,” says Rivera. The Central American country is ranked 116th on the World Press Freedom Index, reflecting the government's failure to protect its journalists and provide them with safe, free, and transparent grounds upon which to carry out their labor. Indigenous Journalists Face Discrimination Mejía’s Indigenous identity adds a layer of complexion to her case. The journalist is Maya K’iche’, an Indigenous group of 1.7 million in Guatemala, or 11 percent of the national population. “The State of Guatemala was founded on three pillars which remain practically intact: discrimination, racism and exclusion,” Albizures says. “The fact that she’s Indigenous has a large part to play, it’s an eminently racist attitude which has resulted in her imprisonment.” Indigenous communities across Guatemala face regular discrimination and independent, Indigenous media outlets are often victims of targeted attacks. Between 2016 and 2018, at least two Indigenous radio stations were raided and shut down due to licensing problems. Radio holds a particularly important role among Indigenous Guatemalan communities, as it serves to preserve Indigenous languages and culture, and dedicates time to issues impacting their communities. These raids often result in arrests and subsequent criminal charges. In 2018, two female community reporters were arrested following a raid on four Indigenous radio stations. Indigenous journalists often struggle to obtain the recognition and credibility of mainstream outlets, which in turn reduces the attention and protection they receive from industry peers and state bodies. In 2016, the Guatemalan state attempted to implement a community media law to provide legal access and protection to broadcast outlets and safeguard Indigenous peoples’ right to produce free journalism. The proposed law was stalled before National Congress could vote on the measure. Working within a small community also means that reporters are more exposed and easier to identify. Earlier this April, the Indigenous journalist Carlos Choc had his home robbed and equipment stolen in what is believed to be an attempt at intimidation. “There are fewer resources in general going to these [Indigenous] regions, and when you have reporters that are actively documenting what's going on, that puts an additional target on their back,” Southwick says. As a result, Indigenous and community reporters often resort to self-censorship in order to avoid conflict or attacks, and also refrain from reporting instances of intimidation to avoid attention. “There's the perception that people who are reporting for these community outlets are inherently activists, instead of recognizing that they're journalists,” says Southwick. “They're already facing the regular barriers that any journalists would face, on top of that — as members of communities that face discrimination — their works is often minimized or rejected.” Mejía’s case is unfortunately unlikely to be the last of its kind in Guatemala. It is the culmination of a systematic based in impunity, intimidation, and discrimination. Even if the Guatemalan state grants Mejía her liberty, she and her colleagues will continue to face an uphill battle in the fight for a free press. “Mejía’s case exemplifies the impunity of the judges, municipality workers, the mayor himself and public prosecutors, who make accusations they know they have no evidence for,” Rivera says. “It’s a way of applying a punishment not only to the person for exercising their role as a journalist, but also to society as a whole.” Iñigo Alexander is a freelance journalist who focuses on social issues, Spain, and Latin America. See article here. © 2020 Northern American Congress on Latin America

Little Done Since UN Mapping Report. Published by Human Rights Watch on October 1, 2020. September 2, 1998, in Kalemie, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo [ABDELHAK SENNA/AFP] (Kinshasa) – The Congolese authorities and the United Nations have not done enough to hold human rights violators to account and deliver justice to victims a decade after the landmark UN Congo Mapping Exercise Report was published in October 2010, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. The mapping report documented more than 600 incidents of serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo between March 1993 and June 2003. “The failure to identify and put in place adequate mechanisms to provide justice and reparations has left thousands of victims and their families helpless,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s regional director for East and Southern Africa. “As a consequence, widespread impunity continues to reign in Congo and the wider region, contributing to the recurrence of killings and other serious crimes.” President Felix Tshisekedi should make the fight against impunity a priority for his administration and take meaningful steps to hold those responsible for past and present human rights violations accountable, the organizations said. The UN commissioned the Congo mapping project following the discovery of three mass graves in North Kivu province, eastern Congo, in 2005 and published its findings on October 1, 2010. The Congo Mapping Exercise Report describes serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, concluding that a majority of the documented abuses qualified as war crimes and crimes against humanity. With reference to particular events between 1996 and 1997, the report raised the question of whether certain crimes committed by Rwandan troops and their Congolese ally, the Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo-Zaïre (Democratic Forces Alliance for the Liberation of Congo-Zaïre) rebel group, against Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutu citizens could be classified as “crimes of genocide.” It specified that a competent court should make this determination. All violations and abuses documented in the report were committed by a range of actors, including foreign armies, rebel groups, and Congolese government forces, in waves of violence that engulfed the country between 1993 and 2003. In addition to exposing serious violations and abuses, the researchers assessed the capacity of Congo’s justice system to adequately address the documented crimes, and proposed reforms and alternative judicial mechanisms that could deliver justice and reparation. But none of the mapping report’s recommendations have been carried out, and most of the documented crimes remain unpunished. Although efforts have been made to investigate and prosecute grave crimes over the last 10 years, mostly through military courts, they have confirmed serious shortcomings in the domestic justice system. While in 2004 the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened investigations over serious crimes committed in Congo after July 1, 2002, many of the events described in the mapping report occurred before that date. The ICC has convicted three former rebel leaders for atrocities committed in Ituri in 2002-2003, but the Congo cases brought before the ICC have failed to address accountability by senior political and military officials. “The UN Mapping Report remains a powerful reminder of the crimes committed in Congo, the shocking absence of justice, and the consequences of impunity,” said Thomas Fessy, senior Congo researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Ten years on, the Congolese authorities and international partners should take serious steps to strengthen the domestic justice system and establish an internationalized mechanism that will ensure credible and independent justice for past and present crimes.” © 2020 Human Rights Watch.

IMAGE: El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele speaks during a press conference at the presidential home in San Salvador, El Salvador, on Sept. 24, 2020. Beside him are files that he said contained the only case information he could find. He was responding to a judge’s demand, still unfulfilled, for documents related to the 1981 massacre at El Mozote . (Photo by MARVIN RECINOS/AFP via Getty Images) Survivors of the largest single massacre in modern Latin American history recently asked the country’s Prosecutor General to charge President Nayib Bukele and Defense Minister René Merino Monroy with arbitrary acts, dereliction of duty, and failure to comply with a judicial order for refusing to allow the judge in the case to have access to military archives from the period. The roadblocks in the decades-long search for justice in the infamous El Mozote massacre reflect a larger pattern of increasing authoritarian actions by Bukele that have prompted unusual criticism of his regime, even from the United States. The 1981 El Mozote massacre by army troops supported by the air force and trained by the United States left almost 1,000 people dead, more than half of them children. The defendants are the surviving members of the military high command and those officers in charge of troops during the operation, including members of the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion. The current standoff in the case began on Aug. 28, when trial court Judge Jorge Guzmán, who has been investigating the case since 2016, ordered an inspection of military archives at several barracks. He was searching for plans or other documents relating to “Operation Rescue,” the army sweep of the country’s northeast in the final months of 1981 under the guise of countering subversion. The army has for years affirmed that no such documents existed, that they were all destroyed, or, alternatively, that they cannot be divulged for reasons of national security. Guzmán decided that the only way to determine the truth was to order an inspection of the sites to find and seize any relevant documents pertaining to the operation. The documents would then be analyzed by archival experts working with the court. Challenging Document Withholding On Sept. 21, the judge showed up at the entrance to the main military barracks in San Salvador. Despite his judicial warrant, soldiers barred the door, on Merino’s orders. The minister argued that, under the Salvadoran Constitution, secret military plans should not be made public as a matter of national security. On Sept. 24, Bukele repeated this argument in a press conference at his home alongside a row of case files that he said were the only ones he could find. He contended that Judge Guzmán is a left-wing militant trying to make the armed forces and the presidency look bad for political reasons. In an interview with El Faro, a Salvadoran online newspaper, the judge responded that he was not looking for current plans, and there was no national security justification for continuing to hide 40-year-old documents. “He must not have read my judicial order,” the judge mused. Guzmán tried again at different army and air force barracks over the next several weeks, always with the same result. Not even an Oct. 9 decision by the Constitutional Court supporting the judge led the military to back down. Finally, the judge retreated to the national archives, which are open to researchers, to search for documents. Bukele entered office in June 2019 promising that he would turn over documents “from A to Z” in the case. Since then, however, Bukele has largely reversed his stance, part of an increasing authoritarian pattern, as the president has hobbled the Institute for Access to Public Information, limiting declassification of military information and impeding its independence. He has attacked El Faro and other independent media, ignored decisions of the country’s highest court (including in this case), and used the military and police in a dramatic move to occupy – and intimidate – the country’s legislature when it would not legislate according to his will. In his Sept. 24 press conference, Bukele announced with great fanfare that he was turning over five boxes of papers (supposedly all that exist) to the judge, but according to both the judge and lawyers for the victms, the government has not officially turned over any documents. Bukele insists that there are no more to be found. In the absence of military documentation, the survivors have sought to use declassified U.S. documents from the era obtained by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University in Washington D.C. to prove that the military high command had ultimate responsibility for the massacre. While U.S. President Bill Clinton declassified a tranche of those documents, others remain inaccessible. Congress Orders State Department Disclosure In the 2020 U.S. congressional appropriations bills, both the House and Senate ordered the State Department to search for and turn over relevant documents. In January 2020, Guzmán wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking for specific types of documents, based on those congressional directives. So far, the State Department has not replied. Meanwhile, Guzmán has appointed Stanford University political science and Latin American studies Professor Emeritus Terry Karl as an expert witness to help the court make sense of the declassified documents and put them into context. Justice has been slow to come after El Salvador’s civil war, which took some 75,000 lives and lasted until 1992. Until 2016, a blanket amnesty law impeded prosecutions. Once that law was annulled by the Constitutional Court on grounds that it violated the country’s constitution and its international law obligations, the El Mozote case and a handful of others were reopened. But El Mozote is the only case that has received anything close to a full investigation within El Salvador.  A number of civil suits in the United States named individuals in the military high command. The U.S. government extradited one of the command’s members, former Colonel Inocencio Montano, to Spain to stand trial for the 1989 murder of six Spanish priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. Last month, Montano was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison in a case that also featured expert testimony from Stanford’s Karl. Guzmán has insisted that the search for documents in the El Mozote case will continue and that he wants to exhaust this avenue soon, before bringing the investigative phase of the trial to an end and deciding whether to move to a trial and sentencing phase. It is still unclear where, and under what rules, that next phase will happen. To date, the judge has used the old 1973 procedure code, supplemented where appropriate by provisions of the new, more adversarial, code. But any decision he makes on how to go forward could be challenged by the defense, prolonging the proceedings still further. Meanwhile, both the survivors and the defendants are dying, and more delay raises the risk that “biological impunity” will prevail. Still, the judge’s increasingly public insistence that the truth be told and that the survivors have their day in court provides hope not just for the victims of El Mozote but of the dozens of other massacres committed during the civil war. © 2020 Just Security

A teenager fled for his life after being set ablaze in a homophobic attack by his own parents after they found out he was gay. The incident happened in Azerbaijan and reportedly came after the 18-year-old, known only as Malik, had been blackmailed on social media. His mother and father were sent a photo of him at a gay rights march and subsequently launched ashocking attack on their son. A friend recounted what happened, saying Malik was set alight with gasoline and kicked and punched by the furious parents. He has been forced to go into hiding since the incident, reported Gay Star News. The teenager is also said to be trapped in Azerbaijan after his passport and clothes were snatched by relatives. Being homosexual in Azerbaijan is not illegal, but it is deeply frowned upon in the culture. A high-profile gay rights activist hanged himself with a rainbow flag after complaining about homophobia, earlier this year. Copyright 2014 IBT Featured Image: Teenager Malik was nearly killed by his parents in Azerbaijan for being homosexual

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) will testify for the defence in the Azerbaijani government’s lawsuit against French broadcast journalists Elise Lucet and Laurent Richard, which a court in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre will begin hearing tomorrow. The two journalists are accused of defaming the Azerbaijani government by referring to it as a “dictatorship” in 2015, when it received a visit from the French president. RSF regards the lawsuit as an act of intimidation highlighting the Azerbaijani government’s contempt for free speech. Not content with eradicating all pluralism at home, the regime is now targeting its critics abroad. Introducing a “Cash Investigation” programme about the background to the presidential trip on the France 2 TV channel in September 2015, Lucet described Azerbaijan as “one of the world’s harshest dictatorships.” In a radio programme, Richard referred to Azerbaijan as a “dictatorship” and its president as a “despot.” He was previously arrested at the end of his reporting trip to Azerbaijan in May 2014 and his equipment was seized. Trying to intimidate journalists in France The head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, Johann Bihr, Azerbaijani journalist Agil Khalil and husband-and-wife human rights defenders Leyla Yunus et Arif Yunus will all testify in defence of the two French journalists. Khalil fled to France in 2008 after escaping several murder attempts in Azerbaijan. Leyla and Arif Yunus fled to the Netherlands after being imprisoned for 18 months despite being in very poor health. “By suing two French journalists who just used their right to free speech, the Azerbaijani government is demonstrating its complete inability to tolerate criticism,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “We must not let Baku export its censorship to France. We call on as many media outlets as possible to come and cover this attack on their freedoms by a foreign government. We will definitely be there to ensure that the world sees the true face of President Ilham Aliyev’s regime.” As far as RSF knows, this is the first time that a foreign government has brought a defamation suit against journalists before a French court. Lola Karimova, the Uzbek president’s daughter, was acting as a private individual when she sued the French news website Rue89 in 2011 for calling her a “dictator’s daughter” who was helping to “launder her country’s image.” The Aliyev regime’s true face Azerbaijan is ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index. For the past three years, its authorities have systematically eliminated what remained of media independence. In 2014, they throttled the newspaper Zerkalo economically and forcibly closed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Baku bureau. Crippled by its financial director’s arrest in 2016, the last opposition newspaper, Azadlig, has stopped publishing, and its leading journalists have been forced to flee abroad. The Turan news agency, the country’s last independent media outlet, became the latest victim in August of this year. Its director has been jailed and its bank accounts have been frozen, forcing it to suspend all activities. Access to all the main independent news websites is blocked. At least 16 journalists, bloggers and media workers are currently imprisoned in connection with the provision of news and information – usually on trumped-up charges. This means that Azerbaijan is second only to Turkey in Europe in the number of media personnel detained. Beatings, blackmail and bribes are also used to silence the few remaining critics. Dozens of journalists have fled the country in recent years to escape the crackdown. By persecuting their relatives, the government even manages to put pressure on those, such as Ganimat Zahid and Emin Milli, who continue to work as journalists after fleeing abroad. The main media support NGOs were shut down in 2014. Aliyev, who succeeded his father as president in 2003, is on RSF’s list of press freedom predators. He was “reelected” with nearly 85% of the votes in a 2013 poll that was criticized by the OSCE. The results were “leaked” on the eve of the voting. A September 2016 referendum reinforced his powers and, on 21 February of this year, his wife was appointed first vice-president, becoming Azerbaijan second most important official. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Reports without Borders

Isa Shahmarly, former chair of the Free (Azad) LGBT group, whose experience as a gay man in Azerbaijan, drove him to suicide. In September 2017, police in Azerbaijan started a violent campaign, arresting and torturing men presumed to be gay or bisexual, as well as transgender women. © Azadliq Radiosu (RFE/RL) Police in Azerbaijan have conducted a violent campaign, arresting and torturing men presumed to be gay or bisexual, as well as transgender women, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch interviews with released detainees and lawyers confirmed that since mid-September, police in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, have detained dozens of people on dubious charges, beating and using electric shocks on some of them to coerce bribes and information about other gay men. Government officials have not denied the crackdown, and have instead attempted to justify it on spurious morality and public health grounds. On October 3, 2017, a lawyer representing some of the detainees told Human Rights Watch that on the evening of October 2, police began to release the detainees, and that by October 3, many had been released. “The round-ups in Azerbaijan fit a familiar horrifying narrative that exploits so-called traditional values to justify violence against sexual and gender minorities,” said Graeme Reid, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Authorities are targeting gay and bisexual men and transgender women using tactics that indicate an intent to continue, and widen, the crackdown.” A thorough independent investigation is warranted, and those responsible for arbitrary arrests and, in particular, for torture and other ill-treatment should be held accountable, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch interviewed five gay men, three of whom had been detained during the September 2017 round-ups, as well as human rights activists and lawyers representing dozens of detainees in various courts in Baku. An October 2 joint statement by the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed that police detained 83 people in the round-ups. Lawyers Human Rights Watch spoke with confirmed the names of 45 gay and bisexual men, and transgender women, who were detained and sent by courts to up to 30 days’ administrative detention in September, along with at least 10 others who were fined and released immediately. The lawyers said that the overwhelming volume of arrests means there are many cases they are unable to address or document. The media have reported unconfirmed accounts of up to 100 arrests. Two of the men Human Rights Watch interviewed were detained in the Organized Crime Unit, known as Bandotdel, and reported that they were tortured. According to lawyers, during court hearings at least 34 other detainees described severe ill-treatment, including beatings, and said that police forced them to sign false statements. The lawyers said that police had shaved the heads of transgender women detainees. The Azerbaijan government decriminalized same-sex conduct in 2000, but there are no officially registered or operational LGBT groups. The government also has a long record of using bogus chargesto jail or fine government critics, whom police in some cases physically abuse in custody, Human Rights Watch said. Lawyers representing people rounded up told Human Rights Watch that there were numerous procedural violations in their cases. Police pressured detainees to sign statements refusing the services of a lawyer, telling them that hiring a lawyer would only make their situation worse. The detainees were not allowed access to lawyers before and during their hearings, and were able to access lawyers only after they decided to appeal their administrative detention sentences. Lawyers said that their clients were all charged with “disobeying police orders,” an administrative offense that may result in a custodial sentence for up to 30 days. The October 2 joint statement by the Interior Ministry and Prosecutor General’s Office said that some were arrested on charges of “petty hooliganism” for allegedly initiating arguments with people who declined solicitations for sex. It also said that 56 detainees were issued administrative detention sentences, while 18 others were fined and nine were issued warnings. Administrative trials in Azerbaijan are perfunctory, rarely lasting longer than 15 minutes, and judges’ decisions of guilt rely almost exclusively on police testimony. Although administrative offenses can and often do result in jail time, defendants in administrative trials are not guaranteed a lawyer of their choosing and they cannot mount an effective defense, Human Rights Watch said. In addition, one of the lawyers said that while the official charge is listed as disobeying police orders, “In some written official materials at the police stations, I saw that police had written that these individuals were gay or transgender, and that they were arrested on sidewalks as they were shouting or arranging sex work.” Sex work is illegal in Azerbaijan, but Human Rights Watch is not aware of any the detainees having been charged with this offense. Lawyers said that the majority of the 45 detainees they have tracked were sentenced to between five and 20 days detention, but that some were sentenced to 30 days, and most have been fined the maximum amount under the disobedience charges, 200 ANZ (US$117). The October 2 joint statement said the roundups aimed to “identify individuals who offer paid intimate services to local citizens and foreign tourists in evenings in the central parts of the city... violate public order by insulting those who refuse these services and causing a dispute, as well as to check whether they are carriers of skin and venereal diseases.” On September 27, Ehsan Zahidov, spokesman for the Internal Affairs Ministry, said that police were responding to complaints from Baku residents that gay men were visible on the streets. Zahidov also sought to justify the Baku round-ups on public health grounds, claiming that the arrests were meant to “prevent dangerous contagious diseases from spreading.” He claimed that gay men arrested were tested for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and syphilis. The director of the AIDS Center of Azerbaijan, Natig Zulfugarov, said no tests were conducted there and that it would be against the law for the police to have such tests conducted without a court order. According to detainees’ lawyers, police had not obtained such orders. Some of the detainees confirmed to their lawyers that they were taken to the Skin Diseases Dispensary, a small clinic in central Baku that is known for carrying out sexually transmitted infection tests, but not HIV tests. A member of the Council of Europe, Azerbaijan is obligated to abide by the European Convention on Human Rights ban on discrimination – including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity – torture, and arbitrary detention. Azerbaijan is also a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which include similar obligations. In addition, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has deemed that deprivation of liberty is arbitrary when it takes place “for reasons of discrimination based on…sexual orientation; or disability or other status, and which aims towards or can result in ignoring the equality of human rights.” The Working Group has noted that police often round up LGBT people on the basis of their appearance alone, and urged governments to pay specific attention to avoid arbitrary arrests and detention of people based on their sexual orientation under laws that vaguely prohibit public indecency. While the protection of public health is a legitimate interest of the state, it cannot justify the arbitrary detention of dozens of gay men and transgender women. Forcibly testing people for medical conditions violates international human rights standards. “Official justifications for this anti-gay crackdown are as bogus and dangerous as the charges police have used to arrest people,” Reid said. “The government’s human rights and public health obligations mean they should focus on protecting and empowering this marginalized minority, not humiliating and isolating them.” Vicious Crackdown In recent years, the government of Azerbaijan has waged an increasingly vicious crackdown on critics and dissenting voices. The space for independent activism, critical journalism, and opposition political activity has been virtually extinguished by the arrests and convictions of many activists, human rights defenders, and journalists, as well as by laws and regulations restricting the activities of independent groups and their ability to secure funding. Independent organizations and activists in Azerbaijan are struggling to survive. In its 2016 review of Azerbaijan, the UN Human Rights Committee expressed concern about “discrimination and violence against persons on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity, including within the family and by police and prison officials…and extortion of money from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in some police stations in return for not disclosing their sexual orientation or gender identity.” There are no officially registered or operational LGBT groups, and the behavior of authorities in September 2017, both in targeting and justifying a crackdown on sexual minorities in the country, has decimated their hopes for basic security and survival. Harassment and Arrests One of the five gay men interviewed, “Ramin,” who, like others interviewed, is identified by a pseudonym for their protection, told Human Rights Watch: “On September 19, my friend received a Whatsapp message that a gay guy, whom he did not know before, wanted to meet him to have sex. When he went to the agreed-upon place in the city center, he was taken away by police immediately.” “Vusal,” a 27-year-old gay man, said: “On September 18, two people in plain clothes knocked on my door in the afternoon. It was the house where several of us gay guys lived together. The officers [pretended] they were repairmen who were to fix something. It was daytime, so I opened the door. They stormed in together with several other men and took me to the police station.” “Elgiz,” a 21-year-old gay man in Baku told Human Rights Watch he was at his male partner’s apartment alone on September 20 when the landlord knocked on the door. He could see from the window that a dozen men were standing in the yard below, so he decided not to answer the door. “Then suddenly I saw my partner knocking at the door,” he said. “He was handcuffed, and several men were holding him. I had no way out, so I opened the door.” Ten plain-clothes officers entered the apartment and pushed Elgiz to the ground, punching and slapping him on the face, stomach, and back. “Both my partner and I were dragged away to police cars. They briefly searched the house and confiscated my computer, and took us to the Organized Crime Unit.” And “Taleh,” a 26-year-old gay man said that on September 18, six plain-clothes officials demanded to see his and his friends’ identification documents when they were sitting in central Baku’s Fountain Square. “We had heard that there were some raids on gays, and I had ID with me, so I showed it,” he said. “[An officer] looked very closely at my face and told me that I am gay.” He was not arrested, but the officers took his three friends to a police station because they did not have their identity documents with them. He said that two were still being held as of September 29, while one was released after paying a fine for the disobedience charge. Later that night, on his way home, Taleh encountered a group of police officers near his house. “They warned me that if I go to the city center or show up in public places, I will be immediately arrested,” he said. “I asked the reasons. They said there was an order from the Interior Ministry, and they have to abide by this order.” Authorities appear to have gathered significant amounts of intelligence regarding presumed gay and bisexual men, their sexual partners, and possible sex work clients – both through past raids and surveillance, and the intensified campaign, carried out in September 2017. Detainees Human Rights Watch interviewed and others interviewed by the media reported that their interrogators took particular interest in gathering intelligence about wealthy sex work clients. Elgiz said he was held from September 20 to 24 by the Organized Crime Unit: “Police identified one of my random partners through my phone that they confiscated. The police had read our communications in Whatsapp, and had seen photos of him. My gay partner was from a well-off family and rather rich. He was gay but hiding his sexual orientation from his family. I was shocked when police suddenly interrogated me about him. When I refused to acknowledge my relationship with him, police beat me on my face and I fell down. Police showed me my phone chats with him. I had no way to not admit that I know him. I later heard that he had paid police bribes so they would not tell his family about his sexual orientation.” “Sardar,” whom authorities detained at the Organized Crime Unit for nine days starting on September 18, 2017, told Human Rights Watch: “[The officers] opened my phone and started to respond to my family’s questions in Whatsapp about my whereabouts. My family did not know that it was the policemen writing back to them. Under the guise of my name, policemen were using foul language in their written chats with my family and others who were looking for me. From my phone, they reached some of my partners and some very respected [wealthy] gay persons, and they began to blackmail them [on the premise that] they had an affair with me.” Detention Lawyers told Human Rights Watch that detainees were held at various police stations throughout Baku and at the Interior Ministry’s Organized Crime Unit, and those whom courts had sentenced to detention were jailed at the Interior Ministry’s Administrative Detention Center. When Elgiz and his partner were taken to the Organized Crime Unit, he said, he recognized eight other gay men who were also held there. The men told him they had been detained on September 15 and 16, and held at a police station before they were transferred to the Organized Crime Unit. Ramin, the 21-year-old man who does sex work, told Human Rights Watch that he escaped plain-clothes officers’ attempt to arrest him and a friend while they were dressed as women soliciting sex work clients in Baku, on the evening of September 17. The next day, he went to a nearby police station in search of his friend, whom police had apprehended. He said: “Together with my friend there were 20-30 transgender and gay people at the station. One non-homosexual also had been brought to the station. Police pressed him to confess being a gay.” Torture and Extortion Authorities held Elgiz and his partner at the Organized Crime Unit for four days, during which he was repeatedly interrogated, including with torture. “I was insistently asked if I am a sex worker…I denied it, as I never do such work,” Elgiz said. “Other questions included if I have a boss who arranges sex business and if I know who collects money from this business. They asked if I pay bribes to any local police officers in the city.” Elgiz said the officers were not satisfied with his replies, so they tortured him: “I did not know anything to respond to such questions. Three policemen forced me to take my clothes off and took me to another room, where I was forced to sit and get shocked by electricity. There were some 10 policemen in that room. During a period of seven or eight minutes, they gave me electric shocks several times.” Police held Elgiz incommunicado for four days, never charged him, or allowed him to retain a lawyer. Before releasing him, Organized Crime Unit officers ordered Elgiz to work as an informant: “I was ordered to cooperate with police as an informer and regularly update police on gays, their gathering areas, and identify rich gays.” Sardar said that while he was detained, from September 18 to 27, officers beat him and used electric shock on him: “I was repeatedly beaten with truncheons on my legs, knees, and hands. I was electrocuted several times and each time they were insulting with bad words. My legs were almost burned after electroshocks. They not only electrocuted my head, but also hit me on my head with truncheons. It was very painful and there were many swollen and burn parts on my head. Still these spots from torture remain on my body.” “After the electroshock, I did not remember which names of other gay men I shared with them,” he said. “I had no other way but to obey what police were ordering me to do. The pains were awful. I could also hear screams of other gay guys that were in that department. They were also tortured.” Ramin, described the men, including his friend, whom he saw detained in the police station: “When I arrived there, it was around 11 a.m., and none were given even water. They were so brutally beaten, their faces and bodies were bruised violet. My friend was beaten by baton, his phone in the pocket was broken in pieces.” Government Response Azerbaijani authorities have not denied that gay men and transgender women in Baku have been rounded up in official raids beginning in mid-September. However, they have offered differing and conflicting reasons for the crackdown. On September 27, Zahidov, the Internal Affairs Ministry spokesman, said in an interview with EurasiaNet that police were responding to complaints from residents in Baku that gay men were visible on the streets: “People complain that such people walk among us, walk in our streets, and sit in our cafés. These are people who do not fit our nation, our state, our mentality, please take action against them.” He was also quoted by the local APA news agency as saying that: “These raids are not against all sexual minorities. The arrested are people who demonstratively show a lack of respect for those around them, annoy citizens with their behavior, and also those whom police or health authorities believe to be carriers of infectious diseases.” Zahidov also employed a public health scare tactic, claiming that six of the detainees had tested positive for HIV, and of those, five also had syphilis. He maintained that, “[t]his once again proves that both our citizens’ concerns and the actions we take about it are justified. It is important for the health of our people. Those who have diseases are being isolated from society.” The AIDS Center at the Azerbaijan Ministry of Health told reporters that they had not conducted HIV tests on any of the detainees, and the two former detainees Human Rights Watch interviewed said they were not subjected to any health tests. The AIDS Center director, Natig Zulfugarov, said that authorities needed a court order to conduct HIV tests. According to detainees’ lawyers, however, the authorities had not obtained any for these cases so far. The October 2 joint statement by the Interior Ministry and prosecutor’s office repeated the claim that the round-ups were conducted for public order public health reasons, saying they aimed to “to bring to justice those have violated public order and to prevent dangerous contagious diseases from spreading.” The statement also said that at the request of their lawyers, 32 detainees were “transferred to skin-venereal [testing centers]” and that “32 people who were not diagnosed with any venereal disease have been exempted from arrest.” The lawyers Human Rights Watch spoke to said that their clients were sent to such dispensaries before they had access to their clients. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Human Rights Watch

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and 36 other human rights NGOs have released a joint open letter urging the European Union’s leaders to press for an end to the crackdown in Azerbaijan when Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev attends the EU’s Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels on Novemberb 24. The priorities listed in the letter include the release of imprisoned journalists, respect for media freedom and the lifting of the travel ban imposed arbitrarily on human rights defenders and investigative journalists such as Khadija Ismayilova. Azerbaijan is ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Freedom Index. Read the letter here or below. Brussels, October 27, 2017 To the attention of Heads of States of Members of the European Union, We, the undersigned organisations, are writing ahead of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to Brussels to participate in the 5th Eastern Partnership Summit on November 24. We urge you to use any opportunity you will have during the summit to call on president Aliyev to end the human rights crackdown and commit to concrete and sustainable human rights reforms in Azerbaijan. These include releasing individuals imprisoned on bogus, politically motivated charges; and reforming legislation that effectively prevents independent non-governmental organisations from operating and accessing funding. Among the 20 Deliverables for the Eastern Partnership by 2020, the European Union has, notably, identified a vibrant civil society as a pre-requisite for “democratic, stable, prosperous and resilient communities and nations.” Yet in recent years, the Azerbaijani government’s actions sharply contradict the latter and the spirit of this important Eastern Partnership commitment. Azerbaijan has adopted and enforced laws and regulations that severely restrict, rather than foster, a vibrant civil society. It has eliminated independent media, heavily filtered internet, and imprisoned and otherwise sought to silence independent journalists, civic and political activists who are essential to any kind of civil society envisaged by the Eastern Partnership. The government’s continued crackdown on civil society and independent media has coincided with negotiations on the new, enhanced bilateral agreement between the EU and Azerbaijan. We firmly believe that the pace of those negotiations should largely depend on the progress Azerbaijan is willing to make in respect for fundamental rights. Although in 2016 the government released 17 unjustly imprisoned human rights defenders and government critics, their convictions stand, and some face travel restrictions and are unable to do their work without undue government interference; those released on suspended sentences could also be sent back to prison. The authorities continue to use bogus, tax-related, and other politically motivated criminal charges to jail critical journalists and bloggers; at least 11 of them are currently in prison. Azerbaijan is ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 World Freedom Index. In May 2017, unidentified people abducted journalist Afgan Mukhtarli in neighboring Georgia, and illegally brought him to Azerbaijan, where the authorities pressed bogus criminal charges against him. In August, the authorities launched investigation against Azerbaijan’s last remaining independent news agency, Turan, and a criminal case against its founder and chief editor, Mehman Aliyev, who is now under house arrest on trumped-up tax evasion and other charges. In May 2017, authorities blocked the websites of Azadliq, the newspaper of one of Azerbaijan’s main opposition parties, and of three news outlets that have to operate from abroad: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Azerbaijan Service, Meydan TV, and Azerbaycan Saati. In March, a court sentenced Mehman Huseynov, the chairman of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), and well-known anti-corruption blogger, to two years in prison for allegedly defaming the staff of a police station. Huseynov had publicized how several police officers arbitrarily detained and beat him, and used electric shock against him in January. Many government critics or political opposition activists remain behind bars. Among them is Ilgar Mammadov, the leader of a pro-democracy opposition movement who in 2013 tried to run for president and who has been in prison since his arrest in early 2013 on fabricated charges of inciting violent protests. The government has ignored a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights and defied nearly a dozen resolutions by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe calling for Ilgar Mammadov’s release. On 25 October, the Committee took the unprecedented decision and triggered the infringement proceedings against Azerbaijan, provided by Article 46 § 4 of the European Convention, following its failure to implement the Court’s judgment on Mammadov’s case. The proceedings could eventually lead to the Council of Europe sanctioning Azerbaijan, for example by suspending its voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly. Non-governmental organisations in Azerbaijan face serious obstacles to operating due to laws and regulations that require both donors and grantees to separately obtain government approval for every grant under consideration. The government has used broad discretion to deny this approval, and the authorities have convicted and imprisoned NGO leaders who failed to obtain it. In January 2017, the Cabinet of Ministers slightly simplified the procedure by which non-governmental groups must register their funding, but this has not reduced the discretion the authorities have to arbitrarily deny funding approval. Since 2015, Azerbaijan’s status in two international initiatives has been downgraded due to the government’s failure to meet specific commitments to foster civil society. These include suspension of Azerbaijan’s status by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which promotes revenue transparency in the gas, oil, and mining industries, and downgrading to ‘inactive’ status by the Open Government Partnership, a voluntary initiative promoting government transparency and accountability. In October 2017, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted two strongly worded resolutions on Azerbaijan, urging the government to cease its unrelenting crackdown against critics. At a time when the Azerbaijani government’s defiance of its civil-society commitments has prompted two standards-based organisations to downgrade Azerbaijan’s status, and has driven the Council of Europe member states to take unprecedented collective action on Azerbaijan’s blatant breach of the European Convention, the European Union appears eager to conclude a partnership agreement with the government. The European Union is a values-based institution. While it has common interests with Azerbaijan, shared interests without shared values will not lead to a strong and reliable partnership. Instead, it is likely to lead to a situation in which Azerbaijan believes European values are negotiable. This risk is illustrated by recent investigations by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project revealing that members of Azerbaijan’s political elite were engaged in establishing and making use of a money laundering scheme and slush fund amounting to USD 2.9 billion, some of which was used to attempt to influence several European politicians to, among other things, whitewash Azerbaijan’s human rights record. Under these circumstances, it is of the utmost importance that the EU leaders convey the message to President Aliyev that the conclusion of any new agreement between Azerbaijan and the EU, as well as the quality of the EU-Azerbaijan relationship, depends on the Azerbaijani government’s steps to address the EU’s human rights concerns. The EU would send the wrong political message to the Azerbaijani and other governments if it fails to bring meaningful political consequences for the continued detention of critics, human rights defenders and media professionals. We urge the heads of the EU member states and the EU to abide by the obligations under article 21 of the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the commitments spelled out in the EU’s Strategic Framework for Human Rights and Democracy to “[…] promote human rights in all areas of its external action without exception". In the most recent Foreign Affairs Council conclusions, the EU and its member states committed to “promoting stronger positions on civic freedoms and against any reduction in the space for civil society to act.” During your meeting with President Aliyev, at the Eastern Partnership Summit, we urge you to insist on: The Immediate and unconditional release of Ilgar Mammadov and the prompt and unconditional release of all other wrongfully imprisoned human rights defenders and civil society and political activists who were prosecuted in retaliation for their legitimate activities. Absolute respect for free speech and media freedoms, including the prompt and unconditional release of all journalists and social media activists wrongfully put in detention; the dropping of all charges against Mehman Aliyev, and an end to the investigation against Turan. An immediate end to the use of travel bans to arbitrarily restrict freedom of movement and professional activity, including in respect of investigative journalist Khadija Ismaiylova, human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev, and others. Reform of laws and regulations on nongovernmental organisations and their access to foreign funding, in accordance with the Venice Commission recommendations. We thank you for your attention to this important matter. Signatory organisations: 1. Amnesty International 2. ARTICLE 19 3. Austrian Helsinki Association – For Human Rights and International Dialogue 4. Barys Zvozskau Belarusian Human Rights House 5. Bir Duino 6. Center for Civil Liberties 7. Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights 8. Civil Rights Defenders 9. Crude Accountability 10. FIDH, International Federation for Human Rights 11. Freedom Files 12. Freedom House 13. Front Line Defenders 14. Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights 15. Human Rights Center “Viasna” 16. Human Rights Center of Republic of Azerbaijan (HRCA) 17. Human Rights Club 18. Human Rights Monitoring Institute 19. Human Rights Watch 20. Index on Censorship 21. Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS) 22. International Media Support (IMS) 23. International Partnership for Human Rights 24. Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law 25. KRF Public Alternative 26. Libereco – Partnership for Human Rights (Germany/Switzerland) 27. Macedonian Helsinki Committee 28. Moscow Helsinki Group 29. Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) 30. Netherlands Helsinki Committee 31. Norwegian Helsinki Committee 32. OMCT – World Organisation Against Torture 33. PEN International 34. Public Association “Dignity” 35. Public Verdict Foundation 36. Regional Center for Strategic Studies 37. Reporters Without Borders Related documents lettereasternpartnership.pdf Contact Reporters Without Borders, US Office Margaux Ewen Advocacy and Communications Director, North America Washington, DC 20005 Office phone: 202.204.5548 Email: mewen@rsf.org _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Reporters without Borders

Armenian citizens are forcibly deported from their town in Turkey in 1915. They were force marched into the Syrian desert, where most of them died. MOBILE, Ala. – Alabama has officially become the 49th U.S. state to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Governor Kay Ivey issued a powerful proclamation recognizing the Ottoman Turkish Empire’s centrally-planned and executed annihilation of close to three million Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and Syriacs from 1915-1923, according to the Armenian National Committee of America – Eastern Region (ANCA-ER). I am so proud of the work that the ANC of Alabama and our friends in Alabama have done to obtain this official recognition of the Armenian Genocide,” said ANC of Alabama activist Jack Hagopian. “Armenians have long called Alabama home, aiding in the education and awareness of the Armenian Genocide throughout the state. It brings me great pleasure to know that our work has been successful. I know that we will continue to educate, motivate and activate our community to ensure that the cycle of genocide comes to an end.” While Governor Ivey’s proclamation notes that the Ottoman Turkish government’s crime “still requires justice,” it also provides a glimpse into Alabama’s active participation in the Near East Relief’s efforts during the Armenian Genocide as well as the U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide in 1951. The proclamation recognizes genocides that followed the Armenian Genocide as well as the act of genocide committed against Christians and Yazidis by ISIL, recognizing that proper commemoration and awareness and education about the Armenian Genocide helps ensure that similar atrocities do not occur again. “We welcome this proclamation by Governor Ivey, making Alabama the 49th state in the union to officially re-affirm this international crime against humanity,” said ANCA-ER Board Chairman Steve Mesrobian. “This proclamation serves as a powerful reminder that truth about genocides should never be held hostage to the denial of its perpetrators and those who continue to profit from that crime. We salute the Alabama Armenian community and our ANCA coalition partners who together stand united in our efforts to create awareness about the Armenian Genocide and prevent future such atrocities,” said Mesrobian. With the addition of Alabama as the 49th state, Mississippi remains as the last U.S. state to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide. The full text of Gov. Ivey’s proclamation is provided below. PROCLAMATION WHEREAS, during the Armenian Genocide from 1915-1923, one and one-half million ethnic Armenian men, women and children as well as over one million Greeks, Assyrians, Syriacs and others were massacred as part of the planned complete eradication of those indigenous communities by the Ottoman Turkish Empire during the first modern genocide that still requires justice; and WHEREAS, Near East Relief’s efforts, with the active participation of the State of Alabama, resulted in delivering unprecedented 117 million dollars of assistance from the American people between 1915 and 1930, that directly resulted in the salvation of the Christian Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian survivors from being completely annihilated by the genocide; and WHEREAS, Raphael Lemkin cited both the systemic destruction of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the Jews, Gypsies, Poles and others by the Nazis when he coined the word Genocide in 1943; and WHEREAS, the United States government first officially acknowledged the Armenian Genocide in 1951, in a document submitted to the International Court of Justice; and WHEREAS, the Republic of Armenia, the Hellenic Republic, the Republic of Cyprus, and the Republic of Artsakh are now free, independent, democratic states and strategic allies of the United States of America in the region; and WHEREAS, other cases of genocide include the killings in Cambodia in 1975, the massacres in Bosnia in 1992, the slaughter in Rwanda in 1994 and now in the 21st century, the displacements and deaths in Darfur as well as targeting of religious minorities by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Middle East; and WHEREAS, the United States House of Representatives adopted H. Con. Res. 75 in 2016, declaring the atrocities perpetrated by the ISIL against Christians, Yezidis and other religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide; and NOW, THEREFORE, I, Kay Ivey, Governor of the State of Alabama, do hereby proclaim April 2019 as GENOCIDE AWARENESS MONTH. “

New documents suggest the Armenian genocide was both sanctioned and assisted by leaders of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul. July 23 (UPI) -- Between 1914 and 1923, during and after World War I, hundreds of thousands of Armenians living in Turkey were systematically rounded up and murdered. Thousands more were forced to flee their homes. Some estimates put the death toll at more than 1.5 million. Now, researchers say newly discovered documents suggest the Armenian genocide was both sanctioned and assisted by leaders of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul. The fact that the Armenian genocide happened is well-accepted within academic circles. However, the Turkish government has continued to deny the culpability of their predecessors. "The Armenian diaspora is trying to instill hatred against Turkey through a worldwide campaign on genocide claims ahead of the centennial anniversary of 1915," Turkey's president, Recep Erdogan, said in 2015. "If we examine what our nation had to go through over the past 100 to 150 years, we would find far more suffering than what the Armenians went through." Erdogan's sentiments aren't without the support of the vast majority of the Turkish population. As the New York Times reported in 2015, a poll conducted by the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, an Istanbul research organization, fewer than one in ten Turks believe the government should label the atrocities genocide and apologize. "Turkish government officials continue to use the same argument, the argument that the Ottoman government never had the intent," Taner Akçam, an Armenian genocide expert and history professor at Clark University in Massachusetts, told UPI. "They accept that there were casualties and some massacres, but they claim the Ottoman government was not able to control the remote areas and that some Kurdish tribes or bandits or some other group, they committed these kinds of crimes." What was missing, Akçam said, was a "smoking gun" linking the atrocities to the Ottoman government. That's exactly what Akçam found. "This new evidence is a major blow against Turkish denialist arguments," Akçam said. His discovery suggests the genocide was indeed carried out on periphery, not by rogue agents and bandits, but by provincial governors. These governors were in communication with and assisted by leaders in Istanbul. "This shows the radicalization process started in the provinces," Akçam told UPI. The evidence, a series of telegrams transcribed, decoded and signed by Turkish officials, was discovered among a slate of new documents released into the Ottoman archive, a collection of historical documents in Istanbul, organized by the government and made available to researchers. The newly discovered letters feature the first unambiguous use of the terms "extermination" and "annihilation" by Ottoman officials, both among the provinces and in Istanbul. Analysis of the signatures confirmed several of the transcribed telegrams were authored by Bahaettin Şakir, head of the para-military Special Organization and one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide. Though the plan to exterminate all of the Armenians living in Turkey began as a provincial idea, the new evidence suggests Istanbul was eventually convinced to back the genocidal approach. In addition to the documents retrieved from the Ottoman archive in Istanbul, Akçam also discovered similar letters -- transcribed telegrams -- that were used as evidence in tribunals organized by the postwar Ottoman government. "There were 63 different trials and more than 200 defendants," Akçam said. "The materials from these court procedures went missing. Government officials never made these court proceedings available to researchers." Researchers only knew about these tribunals from reports written by daily newspapers in Istanbul. A few of the verdicts were also published by the Ottoman government. But some of the documents from these tribunals ended up in the private archive of a Catholic priest in Armenia. Among the tribunal documents, Akçam found transcribed telegrams using the same coding system -- a series of Arabic letters and numerals to represent words and suffixes -- found among the letters unearthed from the Ottoman archive. "I went to the Ottoman archive, I discovered that this four digit coding system was the same for both sets of telegrams," he said. "The authenticity cannot be disputed, this was the major discovery." The transcribed telegrams provided further evidence of communication between those carrying out the genocide in the provinces and military and political officials in Istanbul, including messages that Akçam characterized as "killing orders." As to why these revealing documents were publicly released by a government intent on denying its predecessors culpability, Akçam guesses officials simply didn't read them thoroughly. The documents in the archives were summarized by officials before being released, and the summaries of the newly discovered telegraphs mention nothing of the details relating the Armenian genocide. Akçam said his discoveries, summarized in the Journal of Genocide Research, will further solidify the truth of the Armenian genocide. It's a truth he hopes will soon be accepted by the Turkish government. According to Akçam, the genocide has implications for the political situation in modern Turkey. "Turks and the Turkish government has the same problems today with Kurds as the Ottomans had with Armenians in the past," he said. "Armenians were making demands for legal and social equality. The Kurds are making similar demands today." As a result, Akçam said, the Kurds have been labeled as a security threat and the Turkish government has attempted to suppress these democratic demands. "Without acknowledging historical wrongdoings, Turkey cannot establish a democratic future," Akçam said. According to the historian, reconciling with the record of the Armenian genocide is essential for improved relations between Turkey and its neighbors. "Speaking regionally, if you continue this policy of denialism, this means you have the potential to repeat the same policy against your neighbors," Akçam said. "This is why many of Turkey's neighbors consider the Turkish government a security threat. Without reconciling history, peace will not be achievable in the region." © July 2019 UPI. All Rights Reserved.

While the Armenian genocide is recognized by numerous authorities, scholars and nations, the descendant of its alleged perpetrators, the Turkish government, has always pointed to the lack of a “smoking gun” to prove its existence, says historian Taner Akçam. But now, the Clark history professor claims to have found authenticated proof that the Ottoman Empire not only ordered the extermination of local Armenians in 1915, but also that the seeds of the genocide were planted even earlier on a regional level. “It’s so obvious,” said Mr. Akçam, who is from Turkey himself. “You can see the gradual radicalization.” His discovery adds a new chapter to what he and other historians say is the already substantial case for the existence of the genocide, which the Ottomans are accused of carrying out during and after World War I. The present-day Turkish government, meanwhile, while acknowledging the large-scale killings of Armenians at the time, denies there was a concerted attempt to eradicate the ethnic group, according to Mr. Akçam. “I’m a historian,” he said. “Whether the Turkish government recognizes it or not, I will continue to be a genocide historian.” But intellectually, he added, “of course it’s my great interest that my government – and my American government – acknowledges the historic truth. This is the way to establish peace and democracy in Turkey and across the region.” Growing up in Turkey, Mr. Akçam said he had no idea that such an event might have occurred only a few decades before he was born. It was only later, as a research scientist at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, did he begin to discover those records while studying the history of torture in the Ottoman Empire. “Of course (I was shocked),” he said. “You are surprised by your own ignorance.” But he ended up making the Armenian genocide the focus of his Ph.D. dissertation, and by now has dedicated close to three decades to researching the subject. That undertaking has not been easy, given the fact that much of the historical archives chronicling the events are kept under wraps by the Turkish government, he said. But Mr. Akçam has gained access to some external records that have allowed him to piece together the evidence of the genocide. Most recently, he has published a paper that he said provides the “smoking gun”: official letters from the Ottoman archives dating to March and April of 1915 declaring the Committee of Union and Progress had decided to “annihilate” Turkey’s Armenian population. Mr. Akçam also said he has authenticated the signature on those documents – it’s often the Turkish government’s response to question the legitimacy of such evidence, he said – by matching it to signatures in newspapers and other existing records. Just as important, Mr. Akçam said he discovered another document from a year earlier in 1914 revealing the Ottomans’ plan to begin killing Armenians in two local provinces. Specifically, that order targeted Armenian males, whom the government feared would start an uprising – a common theme throughout the history of genocides, Mr. Akçam said. “There’s a radicalization process – it’s not just one decision” he said, adding the discovery also refutes the notion that the genocide was carried out during the demise of the Ottoman Empire as a last gasp attempt to take the Armenians down with it – “they were on the offensive” at the time. “It shows the ideological element. They really considered the Armenians a threat.” Mr. Akçam, meanwhile, doesn’t expect his work, which is featured in the “Journal of Genocide Research,” to change minds in the Turkish government. “They will continue to deny,” he said. “Denialism has nothing to do with scientific proof, or scholarly articles.” But Mr. Akçam added he is moving on in his research unabated. Even if the debate were to be settled in Turkey, he pointed out, it’s not as if that ends the work of historians; there is still plenty of research being done into the Holocaust, for instance – his own office is in Clark’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies – despite that event being recognized virtually universally, including by the Germans, he said. “This is still fascinating (work),” he said. “There are so many topics – there is no end.” © July 2019 Telegraph and Gazette Worcester. All Rights Reserved.

Mothers who have returned to Iraq without their children say they would rather be back in the hell of their former lives. As bombs crunched into the ground around them in February last year, three young Yazidi women cowered in holes dug in the eastern Syrian desert, cradling their terrified children. In the month that followed, hundreds of people hiding near them were killed by devastating barrages that destroyed what was left of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate and freed the former slaves and their toddlers from five years in the terror group’s clutches. But the ordeal of their lives was yet to begin. The trio, then aged 19, 20, and 24, and their five toddlers were thrown onto the last lorry out of the town of Baghouz, the black banners of the extremists replaced by the white flags of surrender, and driven to the al-Hawl refugee camp where tens of thousands of people from towns and cities seized from Isis were being interned. The women lay low in the camp, worried about being discovered by Kurdish guards who would identify them as former captives and separate them from other detainees. For a month they lived with a dilemma: being identified could deliver freedom, but it could bring a greater heartache than the horrors under Isis – being separated from their children, maybe forever. For Yazidi women who gave birth to children of Isis fighters, those worst fears have now been realized. Their communities in Iraq have demanded they leave their children in Syria before they are accepted home. The forced separations have led to dozens of women being estranged from their children, some of whom they were told to hand over as soon as they gave birth. Nearly two years after the collapse of Isis, what to do with the children born to extremists, and how to reunite families created and broken in such circumstances, remains far from being resolved among Yazidi communities and Iraqi officials. Even in Europe, where many Yazidis have been given asylum, those with the children of Isis have not found governments welcoming. “I have 22 young mothers in my care,” said Dr. Nemam Ghafouri, the founder of Joint Help for Kurdistan, a charity that supports Yazidi women. “There are 56 children in the orphanage in Rumaila in Syria. We believe there are many dozens more such women and children.” When the three women were found in al-Hawl, officials arranged to send them home to their families in the ancestral Yazidi homelands of northern Iraq. All three had been seized from the town of Sinjar in mid-August 2014 as the terror group swept in from the south, unleashing its wrath on a community it had long targeted as “godless”. Their ordeals traced almost the full arc of the Isis rule over western Iraq and eastern Syria, from their enslavement on 3 August 2014, weeks after the group had overrun Mosul and charged towards Erbil, until its capitulation on the banks of the Euphrates River. Thousands like them were enslaved and passed around as trophies among the ranks of the jihadists. Thousands more men, including the three girls’ fathers and brothers, were killed in what has since been recognized as an attempted genocide and one of the most shocking events in the extremists’ five-year rampage. The trio was repeatedly raped and sold before agreeing to marry. Two wed Saudis and the third an Iraqi. All the men were killed. Hundreds of women like them gave birth to children by men from all parts of the globe, nearly all of whom died. After they were found in al-Hawl, the three women were taken to an orphanage in north-east Syria and told to leave their children with carers who would look after them while they got resettled at home in Iraq. “I looked at them and I knew I couldn’t believe them,” said one of the women, now 20, speaking from the Iraqi town of Duhok where she lives in a rented flat with her mother and sister, both of whom were also enslaved. “When I came here, they told me I need to forget about them. They can never come to join me.” Ever since the young mother has had to beg for photographs from workers at the camp. She was allowed to cross the border to visit once for four hours but has been discouraged from doing so again. “Them, our clerics, my family, and the Kurdish leadership on both sides all behave like that part of my life is over,” she said. “I would rather be back in the hell of Baghouz than endure this sort of pain.” A second of the former hostages said she was eight months pregnant when she was in al-Hawl. “I gave birth at the orphanage in Rumaila,” she said. “I wasn’t allowed to look at my baby, let alone hold him. So much has happened to us, and now this?” The third young mother, who, like her friends, agreed to meet in a coffee shop in Duhok, said there appeared to be no hope of Yazidi leaders changing their mind on a ruling in April last year in which clerics said rape survivors were welcome back but not their children. Yazidi elders were criticized for taking an inflexible stance on an issue that has caused shame among their community. “I don’t want to talk about this subject because it’s very complicated,” said a spokesman for the Yazidi cleric Baba Sheikh. Ghafouri, the charity founder, said: “Why should the UN listen to a patriarchal culture where only men are deciding what is better for a family? These girls are saying that life after being rescued is worse than being under the bombing of the entire world. What is better for the children should be a consideration here.” The third mother – all three feared retribution from their families if they were identified – said: “My only option is to go live abroad. I will go anywhere. All I need is a government that will accept me – and my children.” The fallout from the chaos that Isis caused continues to preoccupy several Yazidi smugglers who are trying to rescue community members who slipped through the cracks as the caliphate collapsed. “We know there are some in Idlib. There are some in Mosul too,” said one man who has rescued more than 30 survivors, including women and children, by paying ransoms in Syria. “Some have made it to the migrant route, including mothers with Isis children. That might be the best place for them, even on the high seas in sinking boats. At least they have their children.” See the full article here. the Guardian 2020 ©