Watchdog

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. lawmaker has introduced legislation that would deny U.S. visas to senior Azerbaijani officials due to what he calls Baku's "appalling human rights violations."

U.S. Representative Chris Smith (Republican-New Jersey) introduced the bill, titled the Azerbaijan Democracy Act of 2015, in the House of Representatives on December 16.

"The human rights situation has seriously deteriorated in Azerbaijan, causing damage to its relations with the United States and other countries, and has damaged its own society by imprisoning or exiling some of its best and brightest citizens," Smith told a hearing of Congress's Helsinki Commission held in conjunction with the announcement of the legislation.

"The time has come to send a clear message," he added at the hearing, which was dedicated to the case of investigative journalist and RFE/RL contributor Khadija Ismayilova.

Ismayilova's imprisonment in Azerbaijan has been denounced by Western officials and international rights advocates.

In a statement issued by the commission, which is chaired by Smith, the lawmaker said "the United States can no longer remain blind to the appalling human rights violations that are taking place in Azerbaijan."

The bill comes as Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's government faces increased criticism about rights abuses.

Baku authorities have jailed several journalists and rights activists during the past year on charges such as tax evasion, illegal business activity, and hooliganism.

Rights groups say the charges are retribution for opposition activities and criticism of senior government officials, accusations that Azerbaijani officials deny.

The bill submitted by Smith specifically cites the case of Ismayilova, who in September was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison after being convicted on charges she calls politically motivated.

The legislation would deny entry to -- and revoke current U.S visas held by – individuals "in the senior leadership of the government of Azerbaijan," as well as members of their "immediate family."

Individuals who derive "significant financial benefit" due to their ties to senior officials, as well as security, law enforcement, and judicial officials involved in "persecution or harassment" of journalists, activists, and opposition or religious groups would also face these sanctions.

An exception would be made for Azerbaijani officials entering the United States to take part in negotiations related to a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Baku and Armenia under the auspices of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The visa sanctions "could be lifted when the Azerbaijani government shows substantial progress toward releasing political prisoners, ending its harassment of civil society, and holding free and fair elections," the Helsinki Commission said.

The Azerbaijani Embassy in Washington did not respond to a December 16 email seeking comment on the legislation, and calls to the embassy went unanswered.

In the December 16 statement, Smith cited the cases of Ismayilova, lawyer Intigam Aliyev, opposition politician Ilgar Mammadov, and independent election observer Anar Mammadli, all of whom are currently incarcerated in cases widely denounced as politically motivated.

"It is unacceptable that senior members of the Azerbaijani government are free to visit the United States while [these] courageous women and men…are locked away in prisons with inadequate access to legal or even medical assistance," he said.

"If they can pay the price for standing up for human rights, the least we can do is to stand with them," Smith said.

Wedged between Iran, Turkey, and Russia, Azerbaijan is a moderate Muslim society known for its vast oil and gas wealth, which has attracted investment from major international oil companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and others.

It has been courted by U.S. administrations for security and energy cooperation, and millions of dollars from Azerbaijan have flowed into lobbying efforts in recent years to allay concerns from U.S. and European officials about its rights record and to portray Azerbaijan as a stable partner for the West.

Rights watchdogs have criticized Washington in recent years for what they call a failure to hold Azerbaijan accountable for abusing human rights and civil liberties and, instead, relying on realpolitik in dealing with Baku.

Smith said in his statement that "we recognize that there are important national security, and economic ties that exist between our two countries.”

He told the hearing on Capitol Hill, however, that "as an ally increasingly careens in the path of human rights abuse and cruelty, that relationship becomes less valuable and less reliable.”

"And frankly, I would submit that friends don't let friends commit human rights abuses," Smith said. "If we are friends, then we should be the first and the foremost in bringing this to light and trying to mitigate it and end it."

Smith’s legislation was submitted on the same day that the Council of Europe launched a rare official inquiry into Azerbaijan’s compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland said the inquiry was initiated due to rulings from the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights that "have highlighted an arbitrary application of the law in Azerbaijan, notably in order to silence critical voices and limit freedom of speech."

With reporting by RFE/RL's Mike Eckel in Washington.

Critics of a new Russian law allowing it to reject decisions by international courts warn it could lead to Russia’s exit from the Council of Europe if it is used to skirt decisions by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which has ruled against Moscow and ordered it to pay hefty damages in numerous cases.

But legal experts say there is another issue with the law, which President Vladimir Putin signed on December 14: It violates Russia’s own constitution.

“This law is amazing, because it doesn’t only violate the ECHR system principles, but also the [Russian] constitution,” Dimitry Kochenov, a Russian-born Dutch international law expert, told RFE/RL.

The Russian Constitution, in point 4 of Article 15, states: “If an international treaty of the Russian Federation stipulates other rules than those stipulated by [Russian] law, the rules of the international treaty shall apply."

But the new law, widely seen as a response to last year’s ECHR ruling ordering Moscow to pay nearly 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) to shareholders of the former Russian oil major Yukos, gives Russia’s Constitutional Court the power to decide whether to enforce verdicts by interstate courts.

It says the Constitutional Court should be guided by the principle of "the supremacy and the supreme legal force of the Russian Constitution" when determining whether Russia should comply with judgments issued by such courts.

Kochenov, an EU constitutional law professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, calls this language “absurd” because under Russia’s constitution, treaties signed by Russia -- such as the one governing the ECHR -- are the “supreme force in the land as well.”

“It’s unconstitutional, because it cites the defense of [Russia’s] constitution as an official objective, while at the same time what it reaches in terms of objective is precisely the violation of the constitution,” said Kochenov, currently a visiting research scholar at Princeton University.

‘Extremely Serious’

Russia ratified the European Convention of Human Rights in 1998, placing it under the jurisdiction of the ECHR, which many Russians see as their last chance of securing redress for abuses they have suffered at the hands of their government.

Ratification of the treaty is required of members of the Council of Europe, a 47-member body guided by the stated goal of promoting “human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.”

Thousands of Russians file cases with the Strasbourg court each year to seek compensation for a broad spectrum of alleged rights violations, including prison abuses, illegal surveillance, hazing in the military, and failure to sufficiently investigate deaths and disappearances.

Russia has chafed at many ECHR rulings ordering Moscow to pay damages to victims, typically relatively small sums -- for a government -- involving tens of thousands of euros.

But the legislative push to liberate Russia from its obligation to abide by international court decisions was launched in the wake of the Strasbourg court’s July 2014 ruling ordering Moscow to pay 1.9 billion euros in compensation for the dismantling and nationalization of Yukos, once led by Mikhail Khodorkovsky -- now a Kremlin opponent living in Europe.

While the new law does not single out the ECHR by name, it gives Russia’s Constitutional Court the power to “settle the issue of the possibility of executing a decision by an interstate body for the defense of human rights and freedoms.”

Addressing Constitutional Court judges in St. Petersburg on the same day he signed the law -- but a day before its enactment was announced -- Putin gave clear indication that the legislation was aimed at the Strasbourg court.

"The decision of Russian lawmakers about the Constitutional Court’s rights to make relevant decisions regarding the ECHR’s activities concerning Russia and Russian law is an extremely serious thing," he said.

Putin and other Russian officials have defended the legislation as consistent with other Council of Europe members’ decisions to ignore certain rulings by the Strasbourg court.

“When we randomly looked at practices in Western, European countries, it turned out that some ECHR rulings aren’t being enforced in Germany, in Italy, and very significantly in Britain,” pro-Kremlin federal lawmaker Aleksandr Tarnavsky said in an interview with RFE/RL’s Russian Service.

While other signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights have indeed failed to enforce rulings by the Strasbourg court, Russia is the first to empower its judiciary to formally refuse to do so, Kochenov told RFE/RL.

“Not a single other member of the human rights protection system has anything similar,” he said.

Bill Bowring, a professor of international human rights law at the University of London's Birkbeck College, said that new law contradicts not only the Russian Constitution, but also its 1998 law ratifying the European Convention on Human Rights and recent rulings by Russia’s Supreme Court and its Constitutional Court.

“I’m sure what they have in mind is the couple of billion euros that Russia has to pay as a result of losing in part the Yukos case,” said Bowring, who added that Russia currently “does implement almost all judgments” issued by the Strasbourg court.

Stay Or Go?

What, if any, consequences the new law will have on Russia’s status as a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights remains unclear.

Veteran Russian rights activist Lyudmila Alekseyeva, in a radio interview this week, called Putin’s signing of the law “very sad” and said she fears it could “cost us our membership in the Council of Europe.”

Bowring, who has litigated on behalf of Russian plaintiffs before the Strasbourg court, said the potential fallout from the law is “all very hypothetical at the moment.”

The law allows Russia’s president and government to submit inquiries to the Constitutional Court on the possibility of enforcing verdicts by interstate courts like the ECHR.

“If such an application…is made to the Constitutional Court, they will have to decide what to do with it in the light of the existing law. And only then would the European court itself need to decide, you know, what is going on,” Bowring said.

Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary-general of the Council of Europe, issued a cautious statement after the December 15 announcement that Putin had signed the bill into law.

“It will be up to the Constitutional Court of Russia to ensure respect for the Convention if it is called upon to act under the new provisions. The Council of Europe will only be able to assess Russia’s compliance with its obligations when and if a specific case arises,” Jagland said.

Valery Zorkin, the head of the Russian Constitutional Court, suggested that the two sides were capable of working out differences with "dialogue."

"I don't see any problem there, I think that people are worrying for nothing," he told Putin on December 14.

Bowring says Russia “is showing no signs of wanting out” of the European Convention on Human Rights, “whereas in Britain there is quite a lively debate and quite a lot of people in the governing [Conservative] party who would like to get out.”

“It’s a voluntary thing, of course, and any country could denounce the treaty and leave,” he said. “But I think that would be a terrible thing for a country’s reputation. So, they wouldn’t want to do it, probably.”