During the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council, the International Foundation for Human Rights raised the deterioration of the situation for lawyers in Azerbaijan and Belarus.
An organization’s statement said the forum that the justice systems in some countries have deteriorated largely due to threats or attacks on human rights lawyers.
Before the pandemic, Azerbaijani lawyer Fuad Aghayev claimed that a number of pressure methods on human rights lawyers are used in Azerbaijan. There is a political bias in the admission process to the bar association. At the same time, they are removed from trials or deprived of the rights of human protection lawyers, the statement says.
Note that Azerbaijan availed of the pandemic to enhance pressures on human rights lawyers using quarantine to justify failure to implement decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. Besides, human rights protection lawyers continue to be persecuted and deprived of the right to practice law. In 2020, the Azerbaijani Bar Association reprimanded human rights lawyer Javad Javadov for expressing his concern about the alleged ill-treatment of his client.
In 2021, Shahla Gumbatova, one of the few independent human rights lawyers of the country, was deprived of her lawyer status but later restored after serious international pressure.
A dozen lawyers, including human rights lawyers Alaif Hasanov and Khalid Bagirov, are still illegally deprived of their legal status in Azerbaijan. Moreover, like well-known lawyers Intigam Aliyev, Annagi Hajibeyli and other young human rights protection lawyers are arbitrarily banned from joining the Bar Association, the statement stressed.
“The Council and the Special Rapporteur should grasp the importance of the fact that deprivation of the lawyer’s status in Azerbaijan and Belarus is unacceptable, constitutes violation of the international obligations of both countries in human rights protection and, more importantly, it occurred during the crisis,” the statement emphasizes.
Turan
