Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS)

On 8 May, freelance journalist Ayten Mammadova was threatened by a knife-wielding man in the elevator of her apartment block. The man demanded that she stop writing about a trial she was covering, and warned that if she didn’t he would ‘deal’ with her daughter.

IRFS calls on the Azerbaijani authorities to end their crackdown on critics under the guise of protecting public safety, and for approximately 120 political prisoners to be released in order to protect their health.

President Aliyev calls snap election for April 2018 but ongoing human rights abuses undermine any meaningful prospect of free and fair elections.

IRFS calls on Azerbaijan to immediately release Azadliq executive director Faig Amirli and to stop the harassment of the newspaper and its staff.

On the one-year anniversary of the death of popular Cambodian activist Kem Ley, civil society organisations from around the world reiterated their call for an independent inquiry.

“It was immediately after President Ilham Aliyev’s appointment of his wife Mehriban Aliyeva as the first vice-president of Azerbaijan that the authorities launched a large-scale repression against critics,” said IRFS.

The allegations regarding improper conduct of PACE members are serious, credible and risk gravely undermining the credibility of the Assembly, as well as the Council of Europe as a whole. It is essential that these allegations are investigated thoroughly and impartially.

48 organisations from 24 countries have condemned the continuing wave of detentions and harassment of peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights defenders, civil society activists, anarchists and opposition party members in Belarus.