Daughter of Political Prisoner in Azerbaijan: Gov’t Is Using COP29 as Chance to “Enrich the Regime”

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. We begin today’s show with more on the ongoing crackdown on human rights defenders here in Azerbaijan. Gubad Ibadoghlu is a political economist and anti-corruption activist who’s called for greater transparency in oil and gas sector revenues. He was violently detained in July of 2023 on charges Human Rights Watch describes as “bogus.” If convicted, he faces over 17 years in prison. He spoke to the BBC last week from house arrest.

GUBAD IBADOGHLU: Azerbaijan economy heavy relies of the oil and the gas sector. My academic and the policy research focuses on the oil and the gas revenue and how the oil and the gas revenue manage in Azerbaijan. And I promote the transparency, anti-corruption and accountability not in the Azerbaijan level, in the national level. As you know, I am academic. I need to go to the university, but instead the university, I am going every week twice to register, to report the police department. I am a law-abiding citizen of Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, we are living the lawless country. There is not any role of the court, and this is not legal process. It depend on the political decision.

AMY GOODMAN: Before his arrest, Gubad Ibadoghlu was a senior visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and Rutgers University. He had previously led an anti-corruption nonprofit here in Baku called the Economic Research Center, which the government shut down in 2014. Since then, Ibadoghlu had been living in exile, until he returned last year to visit his family, when he was detained. He spent the next nine months in pretrial detention and was moved to house arrest earlier this year because of his deteriorating health.

To talk more about Gubad Ibadoghlu, we’re joined right now by his daughter, Zhala Bayramova, a human rights lawyer who focuses on LGBTQ rights. They’ve been advocating for his release, as well as the release of other political prisoners here in Azerbaijan. And they won the 2024 Magnitsky Prize in the category of Outstanding Young Human Rights Activist.” They join us now from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Zhala, welcome to Democracy Now!, I’m sorry under these conditions. Can you talk about why your father was imprisoned and now under house arrest?

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: Thank you a lot for having me here.

And the main reason my dad, Dr. Gubad, was in prison is that — because of his research on corruption and the oil and gas industry and how it affects environment and transparency, and the oil and gas industry also quite, Azerbaijani one, well known for money laundering and the corruption around the world. What my dad was doing, he was investigating money laundering while he was teaching at LSE. And what his investigations were showing, as well, is that Azerbaijan was not only money laundering, but also using the money to corrupt Western politicians, diplomats, but at the same time not doing it alone, but doing it together with Russia and the Turkish government.

What my dad was trying to do is to investigate them, but also he opened a foundation in U.K., and that foundation is supposed to serve as a scholarship for Azerbaijani students. And my dad wanted to get that laundered money to that foundation so that the Azerbaijani students can actually come and study in Western countries, learn more about human rights and democracy, and then try to — young people try to change the country in a better and a meaningful way. And that’s what basically was the main reason that the Azerbaijani government decided to detain him, in a very horrible fashion as they basically physically assaulted both my parents.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the day that your dad was arrested?

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: On the day when my dad was arrested, I was actually working on my diploma thesis for master’s degree. And we actually talked, and he told me that he’s going to come and read that and let me know what he thinks about it. And then he went, together with my mom, to do shopping. My dad came to see my grandma, who is a disabled person, so they were shopping for her. And on the way while driving, the six police cars — actually, they were civil cars, so they didn’t have any, like, police emblem on them — physically crashed — like, they crashed their car, and then 20 men in black came and physically assaulted my parents.

My mom was extremely terrified. She actually thought that this is some kind of, like, trafficking or mafia, like organ mafia or sex mafia, so she was actually screaming, saying that, like, “I’m too old for that,” like, “My husband’s organs are not working,” because they didn’t have any police symbol, and they didn’t even introduce themselves. So they basically attacked on my family, my parents. As a result, my mom lost 30% of her nerve function on her right side of brain, so she has been having difficulty just to balance herself. And my dad was kept nine months under the isolation center without — no access to drinkable water, proper food or medication, and then transferred to the house arrest.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk more about what happened to your mother.

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: So, while my mom was detained, she was actually kept there to pressure my dad. And the reason that they were trying to do is they were threatening my dad that they’re going to rape her and they’re going to physically assault her. So they were kept in different cars, but then, later on, in different rooms in organized crime department since their detention, so they couldn’t even meet.

My mom has to stay in Azerbaijan for two months, and she was being followed all the time. We couldn’t get her out because she had a travel ban. But me and my brothers, we have been doing this advocacy around the world to rescue our parents. And as a result of European Parliament resolution on September 2023, we managed to move my mom to Sweden, together with me. So she’s staying with me right now. And we had to hospitalize her a couple of times, in Lund Hospital. However, it took us two months to get her out. And she was in a sense of a priority to rescue, because she was — we were extremely worried about her, as she has never done anything political.

And the reason that they did this, the way that they physically assaulted my parents and brutally attacked them, is because they wanted to show everybody and to create also a chilling effect. They wanted to show that, see, if the Aliyev regime can detain LSE professor and actually can physically assault his wife, then he can do it to anybody, because never in our history anybody’s wife has been detained or has been physically assaulted in this way, so it’s the first time for us, but our society, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re, I guess you could say, in a kind of silo here at the U.N. climate summit, Zhala. And there’s very little awareness here of what’s going on outside. If you can talk about what has happened over the last year in the lead-up to this COP summit? And your father, an anti-corruption economist, is not unrelated to this summit, because he particularly is calling for transparency around oil and gas transactions. And if you can talk about what those oil and gas transactions mean for the president, Aliyev, and the people in his government?

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: Now we basically have more than 300 political prisoners. When my dad was detained, before his detention, we had 98 political prisoners. And after him, in less than six months, they detained more than 200 people. So, what we call it is a start of an unprecedented crackdown. And what we understand, that it is quite related to COP29. In previous events that Azerbaijan hosted, like Eurovision or some kind of like European Games, we had a lot of activism has been done by civil society, people who deal with their activism, people who try to inform everybody what’s going on in Azerbaijan. So, basically, in a sense, the regime, learning from this, decided to clean up all the streets from activists from Azerbaijan or from all the civil society. Even there was two separate persons who protested in Blue and Green Zone. They were also physically assaulted and was kicked out from both places. And they were both Azerbaijanis who has been protesting for animal rights, but also the labor rights of the people who has been working for the COP29 venue and they have not been paid enough.

As for the oil and gas, what my dad’s research shows —

AMY GOODMAN: Zhala —

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: — is that — what my dad’s research shows is that the 1.3% of the whole energy balance of Azerbaijan comes from renewable energy. So, 70% and 28, respectively, comes from oil and gas energy. So Azerbaijan is not even actually investing on renewable energy. At the same time, the more than 50% of the Azerbaijani budget revenues actually comes from oil and gas sale. It’s very important, because after the invasion of Ukraine, right now Europe is trying to rely on Azerbaijan and buying oil and gas from Azerbaijan. But also my dad’s research shows that the oil and gas that Azerbaijan pumps to Europe is not really coming from Azerbaijan, because the Azerbaijani oil and gas, basically, extraction is getting more and more difficult, and we don’t really have enough to supply to Europe. What Azerbaijan right now is doing is also buying it from Russia. So, considering that our economy is completely relying on oil and gas sales and the COP29 is a great place to have a lot of oil and gas lobbyists, it’s actually a great chance for the Azerbaijani government to have more oil and gas contracts, whether this comes from Russia or not, and then to enrich the regime itself.

AMY GOODMAN: Zhala Bayramova, you are a human rights lawyer. You have a good deal of experience understanding what’s going on here. If you could explain who the Azerbaijani president is, Ilham Aliyev? He’s been in power for 20 years, following his father, his regime routinely targeting climate activists, human rights activists and journalists, jailing them.

ZHALA BAYRAMOVA: I can actually explain it from my own experience in Azerbaijan when I was living there. I was tortured twice in Baku, and also in Lankaran, like in a different city, as well. So, I’m a human rights lawyer, but I was also working as an activist. I have been observing the elections, writing the cases to European Court of Human Rights. And what happened is that as a result of all this tortures, I cannot sleep without a neck pillow, as they injured my neck discs. They also crushed my ribs and my kneecaps, so which means that I am unable to wear, like, a normal bra and all these things, because I still have injuries that I have in my body. And I’m also diagnosed as PTSD.

So, this is like one example for me, but that’s not it. Azerbaijani government is not only staying there and only, like, targeting us, physically detaining us in detention centers. No, they are also trying to target us psychologically. So, for example, they spread our personal photos. My personal photos have been spread on internet, and also photos from, like, my first Halloween in Sweden. So, they’re spreading this kind of photos as trying to, like, kind of picture us in a bad light, saying that, oh, we are pro-Western, we are very pro-European. So, we are, like — I don’t know — celebrating Halloween and all these things. I also have pictures, and also my dad’s, [inaudible], which they also spread on internet. Azerbaijani government also sex tape the activists. They put hidden cameras to their rooms, to their bathrooms. They even sometimes send spies to have a relationship with especially women activists and sex tape it and put it on internet. So, it sounds like a movie, but it’s in real life in Azerbaijan.

At the same time, while talking about the regime, I think it’s quite clear — when looking at the Azerbaijani regime, it’s quite clear to see that before Ilham Aliyev, it was his father who was also president of Azerbaijan during Soviet Union and a KGB general. And Ilham Aliyev, as it seems, getting his son to get ready to succeed himself. And his wife is the vice president of Azerbaijan. So, it’s more like a monarchy. It’s a family affair, in a sense, and they own everything. Like, they own the insurance companies. They own all the banks, properties and everything. It’s not a state-owned, it’s a family oligarch-owned in Azerbaijan.

AMY GOODMAN: Zhala Bayramova, we want to thank you for being with us, Azerbaijani human rights lawyer, LGBTQ activist, and daughter of the political prisoner Gubad Ibadoghlu, a prominent anti-corruption economist and well-known professor, imprisoned and now under house arrest. Zhala has been advocating for his release, as well as the release of other political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

Coming up next, we look at the growing debate over nuclear power as Google, Amazon, Microsoft invest in nuclear plants to power their artificial intelligence projects. Stay with us.