Round Table on Political Prisoners Problem

A Round Table on the “Penitentiary System Reforming: the Problem of Political Prisoners” was held yesterday in the ISR Plaza Hotel. The event sponsored by the Henrich Beile Foundation (Germany), was attended by representatives from NGOs, human rights and international organizations.
The South Caucasus Branch Head, Walter Kaufman, said that his organization supported the international cooperation for the benefit of human rights boosting. He called to the strengthening of cooperation in this sphere.
“We cannot back the idea of political prisoners. We must get rid of such legacy”, the German Embassy official in Baku Meyer Wifhausen said.
The Azeri human rights activists stated that the problem remains outstanding despite several pardon decrees. Moreover, there is a danger of a fresh influx of political detainees. Leyla Yunus, Director of the Peace and Democracy Institute said that the current number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan reaches 200.
The function participants demonstrated a special interest to the speech by Enver Kafarli, president of the “Human Rights in the XXI Century – Azerbaijan” Foundation. Giving a generally positive estimate of the state president involvement in phasing-out the problem of political prisoners, E.Kafarli touched upon another outstanding problem of no less significant nature. The fate of many highly educated political prisoners, after their release from prison, remains out of the range of human rights activists’ interests. On the other hand, the freed political prisoners suffer from psychological and moral pains witnessing how their relatives continue to be persecuted. Enver Kafarli called on the Council of Europe to exercise efforts to resolve this very important issue.
The Foundation president also noted that the latest resolution of the Council of Europe concerned the facts of gross violations of the law at by the initial stage investigation and lower instance courts. To the end of diminution of such cases, the Foundation has prepared a project envisaging the monitoring of lower instance court trials.
Enver Kafarli expressed his belief that this project would allow to considerably lessen the number of complaints filed to international courts by citizens of the Azerbaijan Republic. He concluded his speech by tying the problem of the doubts about the exact figure of political prisoners with the disharmonized work of rights activists. At the same time, undeservedly attaching the status of a political prisoner is to be regarded as disrespect to real prisoners of conscience.