Azerbaijan accused of detaining climate defenders while hosting COP29

Hello. Today we're turning our attention to COP29 in Azerbaijan, the climate summit which human rights groups say the government is using to crack down on advocacy. Meanwhile, a 80-million-year-old fossil discovered in Brazil is giving researchers insight on how birds - and their tiny, mighty brains - evolved. To end the week, here's your quiz on the news of the past few days. I would be proud of my 4 out of 7 if watching the news every day wasn't my job. Can you beat me?

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COP29 hosts accused of detaining climate defenders

LSE professor Gubad Ibadoglu has been detained by the Azerbaijani authorities for close to 18 months. Credit: Getty Images

Human rights groups say the Azerbaijani government is using COP29 to crack down on environmental activists and other political opponents. This is the third year in a row a country hosting the climate summit has been accused of oppression and curtailing the legal right to protest.

What are human right groups alleging?

For the first time since the early 2000s, the number of political prisoners - including journalists, environmental activists and political opponents - has reached more than 300, according to The Union "For Freedom of Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan”. “We've seen a dramatic increase in arrests and clamp down on all issues that the government may perceive critical or contrary to its political agenda,” said Natalia Nozadze from Amnesty International.

What do these cases look like?

There is the case of Gubad Ibadoglu, a 53-year old professor at London university LSE who researches Azerbaijan's oil and gas sectors and environmental issues. In summer 2023, he was arrested on charges of fraud and remains under house arrest. "I think it is one of the rules of the authoritarian government, to arrest, to detain the people who have the power to impact opinion," he told the BBC. A man named Anar Mammadli was arrested in April on charges of smuggling, just two months after he co-founded an organisation calling for the Azerbaijani government to do more to align with climate treaties.

What are Azerbaijani officials saying?

The Azerbaijani government rejects the claims and says the government holds no political prisoners. “I don’t accept these type of allegations, as they are not based on facts," the President's Special Envoy Elchin Amirbayov told the BBC. "Azerbaijan doesn’t [differentiate] in terms of participation in this global event of state and non-state actors, including civil society members.”

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