Azerbaijan - April 2023

Local Azerbaijani media and activists said the government has arrested hundreds of religious Shia Azerbaijanis in April 2023 in response to the shooting of MP Fazil Mustafa on 28 March. Although no details of the attack have been confirmed by independent media, Azerbaijani security services have blamed Iran for orchestrating it and arrested eight individuals. The purported motive for the attack is also unclear, apart from deteriorating Iranian-Azerbaijani relations. While activists do not contest active Iranian influence operations in Azerbaijan, they say that many or most of those arrested are either peaceful Shia activists or have no concrete connections to Iranian security services. One-fifth of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners are religious activists, and the government has historically reacted to conflicts with religious activists with indiscriminate mass arrests of religious Azerbaijanis.

Sources: EurasiaNet, Freedom for Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan, Trend News Agency

The “eco-activists” who have been blockading the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia for nearly five months dispersed on 28 April. However, the blockade of the Armenian enclave continued, as Azerbaijan set up a checkpoint on 23 April. While Azerbaijan holds the purpose of the checkpoint is to prevent alleged illegal arms trafficking, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and independent observers hold that Azerbaijan was instead creating additional leverage in ongoing peace negotiations. The International Court of Justice had ordered Azerbaijan to cease the blockade in February, arguing it had caused “shortages of food, medicines, and other life-saving medical supplies” in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan responded by denying it had any control over the protesters.

Sources: BBC Russian, EurasiaNet