The following letter was written by Leyla Yunus, director of the Peace and Democracy Institute, who is currently on trial on spurious charges. Her husband, Arif, a historian and researcher is also on trial. The letter was originally published at Meydan.tv.
They’re planning to wipe us out in agony. Why is that? So that our pain and our deaths become a lesson for all.
They didn’t give me an opportunity to speak in court, but I want my voice to be heard. Finally, I saw Arif. We haven’t seen each other, and I haven’t heard his voice for a year! He celebrated his 60th anniversary in a prison cell, and I’ll have to mark my 60th birthday in duress as well.
We were separated on the 37th anniversary of our wedding, and I already don’t believe that we can be together in this world… with our daughter and the whole family.
Azerbaijan: Silencing human rights
Ongoing coverage of the crackdown on civil society by the government of President Ilham Aliyev
We are both historians, and we are well aware that despotism is based on repressions. Back in the past, [Russian revolutionary Sergey] Stepniak-Kravchinsky wrote: “It’s worse than plague. Plague kills indiscriminately, while despotism chooses its victims from the cream of the nation. ”
Tofiq Yagublu, Anar, Ilgar, Intigam, Hilal, Seymour Ghazi, Khadija, Thale Bagirzade, Movsum Samedov, Yadigar Sadigov, Rasul Jafarov, Rashadat and others from NIDA. More than a hundred of the brightest and cleanest…
In the 80s Arif, and I worked in samizdat newspaper Express-Chronicle published illegally. Then, in 1986 our colleague Anatoly Marchenko died in the Chistopol prison. For me, it was a shock. I am well aware of the deaths in Stalin’s camps, since three brothers of my grandfather passed away there. But in 1986….
At that time, I realized that the terror continued in the USSR, and we had to be ready for it, but I could not assume that the independent Azerbaijan would follow the same path.
As a human rights activist with nearly 30 years of experience, I knew about torture in Azerbaijan. Still, it was hard when I was attacked in the first months of my detention, when on September 23, 2014, Major Yagubov, a young and strong man, started beating me. As a result of these beatings, I lost the ability to see normally with my left eye.
On December 11, 2014, I was dragged by my feet into a solitary confinement without explaining a reason… I heard from Arif that he had also been assaulted during the first days of his arrest…
Arif suffers from stage 3 arterial hypertension. This means strokes, paralysis, hemorrhage, and unpredictable blood pressure hikes. Now he has a tumor on his head. He has been held in a solitary confinement for a year, and he suffers from a persistent pain. It is well-known that I suffer from diabetes and liver decomposition. The EU sent an expensive medicine, but we all understand that in detention this medicine will not be able to help me…
They’re planning to wipe us out in agony. Why is that? So that our agony and our deaths become a lesson for all. If they do not shy away from destroying a well-known family, then others are easy to destroy too. Fear must live in the hearts of citizens. Fear and hopelessness. I have no illusions about this tribunal, as there was no so-called investigation.
Which articles of the law to use in order to fake accusations, make up a crime and sentence a defendant – these orders come to prosecutors and judges from the top. Preparing our indictment, prosecutors got so carried away with the falsification that even a well-known, documented fact of an unlawful destruction of our house on Shamsi Badalbeyli Street 38 was presented as a peaceful move to another apartment. Even the Administrative, Economic, Appeals and Supreme Courts acknowledged the destruction of our house. However, this was clearly an unlawful destruction of property with all assets (archives, computers) on August 11, 2011.
This obvious lie is a clear evidence of how falsified the entire investigation is. Neither the investigators nor the prosecutor fear that their lies can be refuted…
Arif is accused of transferring money from one of his accounts to another. I have witnessed so many trials against political prisoners, given a well-deserved “striped robe” to so many judges, which is why I will definitely not participate in this tribunal. But I’ll just sit with Arif and hold his hand. We both know that this is our last date. When it all breaks down, I will not be there with him … But we are both historians and we know: “wayfarer will seek his way to Lacedaemon so that we … remain faithful to the law.” As my Polish teacher taught me: “For your freedom and ours.”
Investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova declared her innocence at a pre-trial hearing, calling the charges against her poltically motivated.
Ismayilova, who has reported on corruption allegations involving the family of President Ilham Aliyev, is accused of embezzlement, tax evasion and abuse of power. Detained since December 2014, Ismayilova was originally charged with “incitement to suicide”, though that charge was later dropped.
The court barred members of the public, journalists, political figures and foreign diplomats, who had come to observe the proceedings, from entering the courtroom, Contact.az and Radio Free Europe reported.
Ismayilova’s trial was set to begin on 7 August.
“The decision to bar access to the public on the first day of Khadija’s trial underscores the capricious manner in which the government of President Ilham Aliyev is ruling Azerbaijan. Her’s is not the first spurious case aimed squarely at stifling critical voices in civil society. It’s vital that court officials hold the trial in a transparent manner”, Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship said.
In the past year major figures in Azerbaijan’s civil society have been silenced through pre-trial detentions and multi-year prison sentences.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the pre-trial hearing was part of the trial.
“Impunity is a great threat to press freedom in Russia,” said Melody Patry, Index on Censorship’s Senior Advocacy Officer. “Failing to use appropriate measures to investigate the murder of Akhmednabi Akhmednabiyev is not only a denial of justice, it sends the tacit message that you can get away with killing journalists. When perpetrators are not held to account, it encourages further violence towards media professionals.”
Statement
On the 2nd anniversary of the murder of independent Russian journalist, Akhmednabi Akhmednabiyev, we, the undersigned organisations, call for the investigation into his case to be urgently raised to the federal level.
Akhmednabiyev, deputy editor of independent newspaper Novoye Delo, and a reporter for online news portal Caucasian Knot, was shot dead on 9 July 2013 as he left for work in Makhachkala, Dagestan. He had actively reported on human rights violations against Muslims by the police and Russian army.
Two years after his killing, neither the perpetrators nor instigators have been brought to justice. The investigation, led by the local Dagestani Investigative Committee, has been repeatedly suspended for long periods over the last year and half, with little apparent progress being made.
Prior to his murder, Akhmednabiyev was subject to numerous death threats including an assassination attempt in January 2013, the circumstances of which mirrored his eventual murder. Dagestani police wrongly logged the assassination attempt as property damage, and only reclassified it after the journalist’s death, demonstrating a shameful failure to investigate the motive behind the attack and prevent further attacks, despite a request from Akhmednabiyev for protection.
Russia’s failure to address these threats is a breach of the state’s “positive obligation” to protect an individual’s freedom of expression against attacks, as defined by European Court of Human Rights case law (Dink v. Turkey). Furthermore, at a United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) session in September 2014, member States, including Russia, adopted a resolution (A/HRC/27/L.7) on safety of journalists and ending impunity. States are now required to take a number of measures aimed at ending impunity for violence against journalists, including “ensuring impartial, speedy, thorough, independent and effective investigations, which seek to bring to justice the masterminds behind attacks”.
Russia must act on its human rights commitments and address the lack of progress in Akhmednabiyev’s case by removing it from the hands of local investigators, and prioritising it at a federal level. More needs to be done in order to ensure impartial, independent and effective investigation.
On 2 November 2014, 31 non-governmental organisations from Russia, across Europe as well as international, wrote to Aleksandr Bastrykin calling upon him as the Head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, to raise Akhmednabiyev’s case from the regional level to the federal level, in order to ensure an impartial, independent and effective investigation. Specifically, the letter requested that he appoint the Office for the investigation of particularly important cases involving crimes against persons and public safety, under the Central Investigative Department of the Russian Federation’s Investigative Committee to continue the investigation.
To date, there has been no official response to this appeal. The Federal Investigative Committee’s public inactivity on this case contradicts a promise made by President Putin in October 2014, to draw investigators’ attention to the cases of murdered journalists in Dagestan.
As well as ensuring impunity for his murder, such inaction sets a terrible precedent for future investigations into attacks on journalists in Russia, and poses a serious threat to freedom of expression.
We urge the Federal Investigation Committee to remedy this situation by expediting Akhmednabiyev’s case to the Federal level as a matter of urgency. This would demonstrate a clear willingness, by the Russian authorities, to investigate this crime in a thorough, impartial and effective manner.
Supported by
ARTICLE 19
Albanian Media Institute
Analytical Center for Interethnic Cooperation and Consultations (Georgia)
Association of Independent Electronic Media (Serbia)
The Barys Zvozskau Belarusian Human Rights House
Belorussian Helsinki Committee
Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine)
Civil Society and Freedom of Speech Initiative Center for the Caucasus
Crude Accountability
Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly – Vanadzor (Armenia)
Helsinki Committee of Armenia
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia
Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
The Human Rights Center of Azerbaijan
Human Rights House Foundation
Human Rights Monitoring Institute
Human Rights Movement “Bir Duino-Kyrgyzstan”
Index on Censorship
International Partnership for Human Rights
International Press Institute
Kharkiv Regional Foundation -Public Alternative (Ukraine)
Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law
Moscow Helsinki Group
Norwegian Helsinki Committee
PEN International
Promo LEX Moldova
Public Verdict (Russia)
Reporters without Borders
Rafael Marques de Morais, Safa Al Ahmad, Amran Abdundi, Mouad “El Haqed” Belghouat and Tamas Bodokuy (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
A Kenyan woman standing up for women’s rights in one of the world’s most dangerous regions. A Hungarian journalist and his investigative news site. A documentary filmmaker who exposed an unreported uprising in Saudi Arabia. An Angolan journalist who has been repeatedly prosecuted for his work uncovering government and industry corruption. A Moroccan rapper whose music tackles widespread poverty and endemic government corruption.
These were the five individuals named Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award winners on 18 March 2015. Three months later, here are updates on their ongoing work.
Rafael Marques de Morais / Journalism
Rafael Marques de Morais (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
International signatories, from Tiffany & Co and Leber Jewellers to Oscar-winning film director Steve McQueen, and from Blood Diamond film stars David Harewood and Michael Sheen to journalist Sir Harold Evans, recently called on Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos to abandon the prosecution of investigative journalist Rafael Marques de Morais.
The campaigning journalist returned from collecting his award in London to face trial linked to his book Blood Diamonds. He filed a criminal complaint against a group of generals who he held morally responsible for human rights abuses he uncovered within the country’s diamond trade. For this, they filed a series of libel suits against him in Angola and Portugal.
The media attention that Marques won off the back of his award “helped a great deal” he said. “It raised my profile in the days before my trial and maybe helped to make it an international cause.” In a rare sight for Angola, a number of anti-corruption protesters publicly gathered outside of the Luanda courthouse as his trial opened and covert protests have continued under the cover of darkness since.
Marques’ trial played out in a Kafkaesque way over the subsequent weeks, with behind-the-scenes negotiations leading to criminal defamation charges first being dropped, only for him to suddenly discover that he would instead be sentenced for the alternative crime of malicious prosecution.
The American Bar Association, who monitored the trial throughout, published a report stating that the court had failed to meet international fair trial standards on at least three counts. The ABA Center for Human Rights report found that “throughout the proceedings, the defendant was denied the right to present a defense, induced to make a statement on the basis of false pretenses and compelled to bear the burden of proving his innocence, all in violation of international law.”
Marques’ sentence finally came down on 25 May: six-months imprisonment, suspended for a term of two years. Marques is now appealing against this punishment that effectively seeks to silence him until 2017; coincidentally the same year as Angola’s next elections.
The court also attempted to censor Marques’ book from republication and further distribution but these efforts have blatantly failed with copies of the book widely circulated online and an English language version becoming available for the first time less than a week after his sentence.
Despite the international attention, the situation for Marques and his peers in Angola’s human rights and journalism communities remains grim. Recounting the experience of taking his car to the local garage for repairs recently, the fear is palpable in his voice. “There were two members of the ruling party there, by coincidence. They walked across to the mechanic and warned him not to fix my car unless he wanted to risk becoming collateral damage.”
Marques’ email has also recently been repeatedly hacked and his website www.makaangola.org is presently subject to over 250 attacks per day, forcing him to desist from updating it for the time being.
Marques continues to work closely with Index on Censorship and a number of other international organisations. His recent report on the massacre of a sect at Mount Sumi was published by The Guardian, he continues to keep a close eye on both the persecution of journalists and corruption at the highest levels in Angola, and he is expecting to hear back from the Supreme Court about his appeal in the next few weeks.
Hugely grateful for the support of the international community, Marques remains determined “to continue the good fight for change”.
“I have only the interests of my people at heart,” he says, “and to experience all this persecution, it must mean you are doing something positive, something right.”
Safa Al Ahmad (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
Joint winner of the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism, Safa Al Ahmad has spent much of the past three months in the editing studio.
Applauded for her documentary Saudi’s Secret Uprising, Al Ahmad’s new film The Rise of the Houthis – first distributed at this year’s Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards Gala and since screened by both the BBC and PBS Frontline – has won wide critical acclaim.
Next month, on 6 July, BBC worldwide will also premiere a follow-up film that Al Ahmad has produced and directed, with Gaith Abdulahad exploring the present situation in the south of Yemen.
Now regularly invited to attend international public meetings, from Copenhagen to Geneva to Washington DC, Al Ahmad says she thinks that the award has brought more exposure – both for credible investigative journalism from Saudi Arabia, and for her work.
Is that a good thing for a journalist who has made her name through operating undercover? It is a challenge, she says, to find ways to do credible journalism about Saudi Arabia and the region without being on the ground. But there are complex stories, beyond TV, that Al Ahmad would increasingly like to focus on.
Abdundi, who knows many students from the college, immediately joined with other women leaders to organise strong community protests against Al-Shabaab.
“It was a barbaric attack done by a crazy group who have no respect for human life,” she said. “It was a sad day for the people of Kenya and the victims of the attack. But it will not scare [the] people of northern Kenya as we will continue and fight to overcome them”.
Abdundi hopes to help further through her ongoing work with her grassroots community organisation Frontier Indigenous Rights Network, tracking arms movements across the dangerous border with Sudan and travelling to meetings in Nairobi to report observations. “Security is improving now,” says Abdundi.
Winning the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Campaigning, and sharing the story of the people of northern Kenya with the wider world, “made me so happy” she says. “The award ceremony was aired by all community radios in northern Kenya and reached many people. I am happy because it will give women courage to stand up for their rights”.
Spending a week in Index on Censorship’s office in London was “an opportunity to see how you work” Abdundi said, and has inspired her to want to develop a new website for her work, helping her to “spread her message to all corner[s] of northern Kenya”.
Tamas Bodoky (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
Atlatszo.hu, Tamas Bodoky’s investigative news website in Hungary has continued to gather praise and acclaim, including another award, the Theodor Heuss Medal.
“All of this recognition is very helpful,” said Bodoky. “We are always afraid of retaliation and this offers us a level of protection… Hungarian authorities are very aware of this international attention and it is less likely that they will attack as we continue with our investigative projects.”
Atlatszo continues to publish three to four articles and numerous blog posts each week, including an English newsletter, often drawing on FOI requests to try to bring more transparency to Hungarian public life.
The campaigning journalists scored a major recent success with their campaign to demand political party foundations make information on their beneficiaries, income and spending publicly available. When political party Jobbik’s foundation refused to comply, Atlatszo took action. It began legal proceedings that proved sufficient to make them capitulate.
Bodoky’s organisation is now using this newly available information to research deeper, exploring “far right networks” and, he says, some curious connections between governing party Fidesz and football club Ferencvarosi TC.
As he looks ahead, Bodoky is especially concerned by the looming threat of a foreign NGO law – holding all NGO’s with foreign funding “accountable and transparent” by forcing them to register.
“We don’t know exactly when they will seek to expose and limit foreign funding, but the Russian recipe is definitely on the table,” says Bodoky. Fortunately his organisation has been totally open and transparent since 2013.
Rapper El Haqed (Photo: Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship)
Rapper Mouad Belghouat, better known as El Haqed (“the enraged” in Arabic) continues to rail against the endemic corruption and widespread poverty he says he sees in Morocco.
Imprisoned three times since 2011, El Haqed was not only prohibited from performing publicly in his homeland but had also been struggling to obtain visas to travel or perform internationally.
The good news is that his visit to the UK has helped him to overcome this obstacle, recently spending five weeks touring Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Highlights included performing live during Oslo’s 1 May celebrations and working with the organisation Freemuse to record a new Fela Kuti cover as part of a group of Arab and Iranian revolutionary artists (listen here). “It was much easier to be there because I went to England and came back,” said Belghouat.
Until recently limited to publishing and sharing his work via YouTube and Facebook, El Haqed has also begun something of an offline resurgence back home. Approached by promoters in his home town of Casablanca after winning the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Arts Award brought him widespread local media coverage, El Haqed now hopes to stage his first live concert on home soil in a long time this Friday 19 June. (Update 22 June 2015: Morocco: Police block concert by Index award-winning rapper El Haqed)
“Usually people find many excuses not to work with him,” according to Belghouat’s brother and manager Abderrahim Belghouat, “but so far this time no people have yet come and told the venue ‘don’t work with him’…”
Update 23 June 2015: El Haqed has now cancelled his planned tour of five of Morocco’s least affluent towns. The planned series of concerts would have teamed El Haqed with six other local musicians to “bring joy to poorer people in cities without theatres, cinemas and cultural areas, in the old Moroccan way, by making music for free outdoors”.
El Haqed is determinedly hopeful, “the Index award has shown Moroccan authorities that you can’t stop me,” he said, “the more of an effort they make to silence me, the more my voice arrives everywhere.”
