On July 23 last year, while driving outside Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, my parents’ car was rammed by plainclothes police who violently bundled them into their vehicle and threw them into custody.
My father Dr. Gubad Ibadoghlu was accused of religious extremism and handling counterfeit money — politically-motivated and bogus charges which he categorically denies — and detained for nine months before being released under house arrest. He now faces a potential 17 years in jail if convicted.
With rapidly deteriorating health, it could be a death sentence.
Such a travesty of justice would be concerning anywhere but this is being perpetrated by the host of the upcoming UN Climate summit on 11 November.
A major oil and gas producer like Azerbaijan was already an unseemly setting for the COP29 on environmental grounds alone. But in a matter of weeks delegates will fly into a country which rights watchdog Freedom House labels as one of the world’s least free and where the remnants of independent media and civil society are under sustained attack.
On 17 October, the European Parliament will shortlist three candidates for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought – the EU’s highest tribute to human rights work, named for the Moscow-born nuclear physicist and pioneering activist Andrei Sakharov.
My father is among the nominees and a win would mark the first time an Azerbaijani dissident is honoured. It would be a fitting tribute to someone whose life and career mirrors that of the award’s namesake — both professors from post-Soviet countries fighting against state tyranny and their own internal exile.
More crucially, an invitation to the awards ceremony in December would also allow my father to receive urgent heart surgery in Europe.
Such a travesty of justice would be concerning anywhere but this is being perpetrated by the host of the upcoming UN Climate summit on 11 November
My father’s health was already fragile when he returned to Azerbaijan last year — after being given false assurances of his security — but cardiologists have testified that an aneurysm poses an imminent danger to his life.
He is being punished for his academic work, which has long advocated for transparent management of oil and gas resources, and for his investigations into the kleptocratic regime of president Ilham Aliyev.
Ruling with an iron-fist since 2003, Aliyev seeks to use the COP29 to greenwash his country’s toxic environmental record and to snuff out the last remaining voices of dissent. Europe should not let him get away with it.
At the time of his capture, my father was establishing a London-based foundation to support higher education for young Azeri leaders of the future that would be funded by the assets of corrupt elites confiscated by British authorities.
The government of Azerbaijan fears its young people spending time in free countries, less they encourage a push for democracy back home. My father is a well-known figure in Azerbaijan and his detention last year ushered in a chilling effect on the country’s already beleaguered civil society.
If a London School of Economics professor can be snatched off the street in broad daylight, then who is safe?
But even abroad, Azerbaijani opposition figures are not safe. On 1 October, anti-government critic Vivadi Isgandarli was fatally beaten and stabbed in an attack at his apartment in France.
Recent years have seen the unexplained deaths of several dissidents. Many more have been assaulted or kidnapped.
Since my father’s detention, my family and I have received relentless threats and harassment both online and in person. The regime appears to act with complete impunity, at a time where its energy reserves have become even more useful for Europe.
Months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen flew to Baku to sign a deal doubling Azeri gas imports to 20bn cubic meters a year by 2027, referring to the country as a ‘reliable’ and ‘trustworthy’ partner.
Such a characterization is curious.
Flush with its fossil fuel fortune, little of which is shared with the Azerbaijani people, the ruling elite spends billions on bribing government officials resulting in lobbying scandals stretching from Brussels to Washington.
Europe has merely replaced dependency on one energy-rich dictator with another, and one that maintains a solid friendship with Moscow.
When the Sakharov awards ceremony takes place on 18 December, the COP29 will have culminated and the media circus will have moved on, which is when we expect a new wave of repression against anyone who spoke up.
In 1975, Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel prize but was prevented by Soviet authorities to travel to Norway to receive it, and he spent some of his last years in internal exile.
The shortlisting, and hopeful awarding, of Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu for the Sakharov prize would not just deal a blow to tyranny and greenwashing, it may be the difference between life and death.
Zhala Bayramova is a human rights lawyer and daughter of Azerbaijani renowned LSE professor, anti-corruption expert, vocal activist and critic of the Azerbaijani government, Gubad Ibadoghlu.
Zhala Bayramova is a human rights lawyer and daughter of Azerbaijani renowned LSE professor, anti-corruption expert, vocal activist and critic of the Azerbaijani government, Gubad Ibadoghlu.