100 signatures reached
To: Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong
Let's Free Academic Bahruz Samad from the Authoritarian Azerbaijan Government
We therefore ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs to push for Australia to issue an open denouncement of the Azerbaijan government and initiate a motion in the United Nations General Assembly for sanctions against Azerbaijan until it releases all of the journalists, academics and other political prisoners.
Why is this important?
Currently, Bahruz Samadov is wrongly imprisoned in solitary confinement following a farce trial, suffering not just the inhumane conditions of the Azerbaijan prison, but the complete violation of his rights under both Azerbaijan state law and international declarations of the United Nations. This is one of many punishments, not acts of justice, done onto academic dissenters who criticised the actions of the Azerbaijan state. If this injustice is left unchallenged, not only will more attacks on academic freedom spread as a norm globally, but only more instability will follow in the critical region surrounding as Azerbaijan continues to prosecute not just those within its territories but those further abroad.
Through silencing peace advocates like Samadov, there is no limit on how these types of attacks on academic freedom will grow and materialise inside of Azerbaijan and abroad. Australia should stand as a bastion for such freedoms of academics and human-rights defenders, as a country built on democratic values and cultures of acceptance.
We have a responsibility to stand in the way of the wrongful prosecution of individuals who stand for our shared values of human rights, freedom and education.