Daughter of Political Prisoner in Azerbaijan: Gov't Is Using COP29 as Chance to "Enrich the Regime"

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In Baku, Azerbaijan, _Democracy Now!_ continues our coverage of the 2024 U.N. climate summit and its host country's record on human rights. "Considering that our economy is completely relying on oil and gas sales and the COP29 is a great place to have a lot of oil and gas lobbyists, it's actually a great chance for the Azerbaijani government to have more oil and gas contracts … and then to enrich the regime itself," says Zhala Bayramova, a human rights lawyer focused on LGBTQ rights now. Their father Gubad Ibadoghlu is one of hundreds of Azerbaijani political prisoners targeted for his criticism of corruption and the fossil fuel industry. Ibadoghlu and his wife were violently assaulted and threatened last July, and Ibadoghlu has been detained ever since. "The reason that they did this, the way that they physically assaulted my parents and brutally attacked them, is because they wanted to show everybody and to create also a chilling effect," says Bayramova, who notes that the country's arrests of activists appear to have aligned with its preparations to host the U.N. climate summit, as the regime sought to "clean up the streets."

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