Repression Intensifies in the Country Hosting a Major Climate Meeting

In the months leading up to a high-profile global climate summit in November, the government of Azerbaijan has been intensely preparing for its role as host, renovating building facades, training volunteers and retrofitting a stadium for tens of thousands of delegates.

The energy-rich nation in the Caucasus Mountains region has engaged in more ominous activity as well: It has locked up dozens of activists and journalists in what experts describe as the country’s most aggressive campaign of repression in years.

The spate of arrests, which began last year, has surprised some observers who expected that Azerbaijan’s authoritarian ruler, President Ilham Aliyev, would feel international pressure to project an image of political openness before the summit, which is convened by the United Nations. Instead, human rights monitors and political analysts say, Mr. Aliyev appears intent on stamping out the last vestiges of independent civil society and free press in his country.

“We haven’t seen repression like this in the country in a long time,” said Stefan Meister, who studies Azerbaijan and other parts of the former Soviet Union for the German Council on Foreign Relations. Some of the arrests, he said, appeared to be an effort to “eliminate everything that could lead to criticism around COP,” as the climate change meeting, officially the Conference of the Parties, is known.

Those arrested have included at least 12 journalists for at least three prominent independent media outlets, human rights watchdogs say. They have also included well-known activists like Anar Mammadli, who was arrested weeks after he co-founded a group in February called the Climate Justice Initiative that aimed to use the climate summit to pressure the government to improve human rights and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.