Rufat Safarov, a prominent human rights defender from Azerbaijan, was one of the recipients of the U.S. secretary of state’s 2024 Human Rights Defender Award. He did not attend Tuesday's ceremony in Washington, because he'd been arrested December 3, hours after visiting the U.S. Embassy in Baku to receive his visa to travel to the United States.


During the ceremony, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, pointing to the empty chair reserved for Safarov, called for his immediate release.


“Now, one chair, as you will have noted, is empty on this stage. ... It belongs to Rufat Safarov, the Azerbaijani human rights defender that I spoke of just a few moments ago,” he said. “The government of Azerbaijan should release Rufat — and release him immediately — as well as all the other journalists, human rights defenders, political opponents and others that are unjustly detained.”


At the end of the ceremony, Blinken presented awards to human rights defenders from Bolivia, Colombia, Eswatini, Ghana, Kuwait, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan, and he posed for a photo with them. Later, Blinken approached the empty seat reserved for Safarov and took a commemorative photo with his award.


Blinken issued another statement Wednesday calling on the Azerbaijani government to release Safarov, as well as others unjustly detained for their work in the field of human rights.


“The United States is deeply concerned not only by these detentions, but by the increasing crackdown on civil society and media in Azerbaijan,” the statement read.


Safarov, a former prosecutor who heads the Defense Line human rights organization, issued a statement expressing his gratitude for the award.


“Unfortunately, Baku arrested me in order to prevent me from personally receiving that award and to punish me for my human rights advocacy,” he said in the statement sent to VOA from prison.


Safarov said he was proud of his work defending universal values as a human rights activist "despite all the slander and pressure" from the government.


"In fact, I have accepted my arrest as a reward from the government for human rights advocacy. Human rights are not an internal affair of any country. İt is a universal concept.


“Without human rights, not only the state, but even the society cannot exist. I call on everyone to stand in solidarity in the defense of human rights," the statement read.


Last week, Safarov was charged with fraud and hooliganism and put on four months of pretrial detention.


Azerbaijan's Ministry of Internal Affairs told VOA that Safarov's detention was related to a conflict between him and an individual over a land purchase, an allegation he denied.


Safarov was previously sentenced to jail for bribery in 2016 and served three years before being pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev.


His arrest coincides with a new crackdown in Azerbaijan following a recent climate change conference held November 11-22 in Baku. The arrests prompted Western concerns about the state of human rights in the country.


In his statement Wednesday, Blinken called on Azerbaijani authorities to end the crackdown on civil society and the media.


“We urge the government of Azerbaijan to release those unjustly detained for their advocacy on behalf of human rights, cease its crackdown on civil society, respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all, and fulfill the commitments it made when it joined the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,” Blinken said.


This story originated in VOA’s Azerbaijani Service.

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