Honouring of obligations and commitments by Azerbaijan
Resolution 1358 (2004)

1. Ten years after its independence Azerbaijan is, for the first time, going through political transition with Ilham Aliyev elected in the October 2003 presidential election. The new government is facing serious challenges in pursuing the reforms that are necessary to fulfil Azerbaijans obligations and commitments as a member state of the Council of Europe.
2. The Parliamentary Assembly believes that the newly elected President must be given an opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to European democratic values and principles. As the former President of the Azerbaijani Delegation to the Assembly, Mr Ilham Aliyev is familiar with the obligations resulting from his countrys membership of the Council of Europe. The Assembly therefore hopes that he will speedily initiate the necessary reforms in the field of pluralistic democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights.
3. Moreover, the Assembly regrets that no progress has been made to peacefully resolve the situation concerning the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict on Nagorno Karabakh which was the principal justification for inviting Azerbaijan and Armenia to join the Council of Europe at the same time.
4. The Assembly notes with satisfaction the fact that it has ratified the European Social Charter, the European Outline Convention on Transfrontier Co-operation, the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption and the Civil Law Convention on Corruption, the Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters and its additional protocols, and the Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds of Crime but the Assembly insists that the Conventions have to be fully implemented in order to comply with the commitments.
5. The Assembly recognises that Azerbaijan has achieved certain progress towards honouring obligations and commitments since the last monitoring report in September 2002. However, it considers that this progress is far from satisfactory, particularly with regard to the implementation of new laws. It therefore expects the new government to take into account the following findings and act on the Assemblys recommendations.
6. With regard to the presidential election of 15 October, the Assembly is particularly concerned:
i. that the first election since accession of Azerbaijan to the Council of Europe again failed to meet generally accepted international standards in several aspects. The lack of transparency of the overall process and the poor performance of the election administration allowed for falsification of election results and cast doubt on the credibility of the scale of Ilham Aliyevs victory;
ii. that authoritarian practices like intimidation of voters, pressures on elections commissioners or clear bias of the media in favour of the ruling partys candidate were again observed during the 2003 election. In a member state of the Council of Europe, which has been independent for more than 10 years, such practice is unacceptable;
iii. about the post-election violence that erupted on the day after the election, particularly about the excessive use of force by the Azerbaijani security forces that resulted in the death of at least one protester and the injuring of hundreds of protesters. The Assembly is not aware of any steps taken by the authorities to investigate and prosecute the excessive use of force by the security forces;
iv. that the wave of arbitrary arrests of opposition supporters and election officials and observers, as well as politically motivated dismissals that were reported in the post election period seem to continue. Conditions of detention are inhuman and unacceptable;
v. about widespread and credible reports of torture, severe beatings, and unacceptable threats that were made to intimidate opposition leaders and their supporters, as well as human rights activists. In particular, the Assembly expresses concern about reports that numerous opposition leaders were tortured and abused at the Ministry of Interiors Organized Crime Unit;
vi. that more than 100 people associated with the opposition, including a former prime minister of Azerbaijan, a member of the parliament of Azerbaijan, the leaders of several opposition parties, the editor of Azerbaijans main opposition newspaper, and a number of civil society leaders, remain in detention since the October elections and may face long sentences of imprisonment if convicted;
vii. the Azerbaijani authorities should continue releasing people who have been detained after 15 October and should refrain from any new arrests and detentions of people for their political opinions and activities, personal thoughts or beliefs.
7. With regard to separation of power, the Assembly notes that the constitutional provisions regarding separation of powers seem to be inadequate and this fundamental principle appears not to be applied in practice. The parliament needs to reinforce its independence vis--vis the executive in order to exercise control over the governments activities, especially in the field of respect for human rights. In a democratic system, the parliament must in particular be able to exercise its right to question members of the government and to receive precise answers as regards implementation of the laws and the use of government executive powers.
8. With regard to media, the Assembly deplores that:
i. the numerous problems reported in the year leading to the election in the field of media were not appropriately dealt with. The activities of independent media in Azerbaijan were extremely weakened. During the election campaign the state-controlled media failed to offer equal opportunities to all candidates and showed an undeniable bias in favour of the candidacy of the current president;
ii. the commitment undertaken by Azerbaijan to transform the two existing state channels into truly independent public service broadcasting organisations was not fulfilled. The Assembly regrets that the draft law on public TV currently in the parliament was not submitted to the Council of Europe for a final appraisal. Furthermore, the Assembly stresses that the National Council of Radio Television responsible for regulating the private electronic media should operate on a pluralistic and democratic basis and act in an independent, impartial and transparent manner.
9. With regard to fundamental freedoms, the Assembly can only conclude that efforts made are far from satisfactory:
i. freedom of expression has been further curtailed since the last Resolution adopted in September 2002, and none of the recommendations contained therein were taken into consideration. The voters basic right to freely express their choice was systematically undermined by insidious pressure and lack of secrecy in voting procedures. Journalists were reported to exercise self censorship due to intimidation by the executive bodies and non-state media were administratively harassed;
ii. freedom of association still causes serious concerns. The numerous restrictions on freedom of association and obstacles to the implementation of the citizens rights to associate are unacceptable. A proper system of registration of associations and other entities as well as a concrete possibility to exercise the right to associate should be put into place;
iii. freedom of peaceful assembly still suffers repeated and unacceptable restrictions and impediments to the right to campaign were again observed during the presidential election. Despite strong recommendations of the Assembly on this matter, numerous incidents of undue and disproportionate use of force against demonstrators were reported. The Assembly considers that the situation concerning this basic freedom is not improving as one would expect from a country which has been a member of the Council of Europe for more than 2 years;
iv. violations of basic human rights by law enforcement bodies are still reported and the police forces still react in an inadequate and disproportionate manner. The Assembly can only deplore once again the use of force which resulted in the death of at least one person. The Assembly considers that the scale of the post election protest movement shows an obvious lack of democratic opportunities for the population to express its concerns;
v. use of torture and ill-treatment of detainees continue. The Assembly cannot accept detention conditions where detainees are deprived of food and water, denied access to their lawyers and subjected to physical and psychological pressure and ill-treatment in order to extract confessions;
10. In the light of the above, the Assembly urges the Azerbaijani authorities:
i. to set up, with the assistance and participation of Council of Europe experts and parliamentarians, a national parliamentary enquiry commission to investigate the election shortcomings and human rights violations that took place during and after the elections;
ii. to release or speedily bring to trial supporters and leaders of opposition political parties detained in the post-election period. All detainees must be granted access to their lawyers and be afforded the right to a fair trial. The presumption of innocence must be respected and the sentences imposed should be proportionate. The authorities must take all necessary measures to make sure that none of the cases under investigation would result in creating new cases of political prisoners;
iii. to take the necessary measures to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute all cases of ill-treatment and torture. There should be no impunity for officials involved in such practices;
iv. to take measures and if necessary legislate in order to protect the media, NGOs, political activists or their relatives from intimidation and harassment by the authorities;
v. to take measures enabling the written press to freely and properly function, especially with regard to access to paper, printing and distribution facilities;
vi. to continue to ensure that election officials responsible for election frauds and other violations of the electoral code are brought to justice;
vii. to publish the election results in their entirety, for each polling station and to officially acknowledge the serious irregularities that occurred during the 2003 election process;
viii. to immediately start preparing a new civil register in order to improve the currently deficient voters lists. This process should be transparent and should guarantee a proper registration of voters for the future municipal elections scheduled in 2004;
ix. to adopt the law on the Statute of the Constitutional Court and to further amend accordingly the relevant procedural codes, essential to the proper functioning of this newly created institution;
x. to effectively continue and implement without delay the reform of the judicial system, in order to guarantee full independence and credibility of this institution, taking into account the December 2002 recommendations made by the experts of the Council of Europe;
xi. to speedily forward for appraisal to the Council of Europe, according to the initial commitments and obligations subscribed by Azerbaijan upon accession, the texts of the following laws before being signed by the President:
the law on corruption,
the law on registration of legal entities,
the law on advocacy,
the law on public service broadcasting,
the law on access to information,
in order to ensure that these are fully in line with Council of Europe standards before entering into force;
xii. to take the appropriate measures in order to fulfil the remaining obligations and commitments specified in Resolution 1305 (2002).
11. The Assembly cannot envisage closing the current monitoring procedure until Azerbaijan has made substantial progress on the outstanding issues and, notably, before it has proved to be capable of running free and fair elections in line with internationally accepted standards.
12. It recalls that closing the monitoring procedure can only be envisaged upon fulfilment of all major commitments, which includes, in the case of Azerbaijan and Armenia, an agreement on the peaceful settlement of the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan, which has been pending for more than eight years now.
13. Recalling that in Opinion No. 222 (2000) the Assembly considered that the simultaneous accession of Azerbaijan and Armenia could help to establish the climate of trust and dtente needed for a peaceful solution to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, and noting its call on the Azerbaijani and Armenian authorities to continue their dialogue to give new impetus to regional co-operation which could contribute to this climate, the Assembly calls on the Bureau of the Assembly to consider how regional parliamentary dialogue and co-operation involving the speakers of parliaments, that had been established, can be restored and progress as soon as possible.
14. Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Assembly expects the Azerbaijani authorities to demonstrate clearly their commitment to the principles on which the Council of Europe was founded and the values of a democratic, humanist and tolerant Europe. In this context, the Assembly firmly urges the Azerbaijani authorities to address without delay in particular the issues mentioned in paragraph 9 of the present Resolution.
15. The Assembly also urges the Azerbaijani Parliamentary Delegation and the entire Parliament to fully support the measures that are necessary to be taken by the authorities in order to comply with the Assemblys recommendations.
16. If no progress is recorded before June 2004, the Assembly may be requested to reconsider the ratification of the credentials of the Azerbaijani parliamentary delegation to the Council of Europe, in conformity with Article 12 of Resolution 1115 (1997) and Rule 9 of its Rules of Procedure

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