Forum of Azerbaijani civil society calls on authorities to remove obstacles for NGOs

The Azerbaijani authorities must cancel the amendments to the law on NGOs, simplify registration of them, and remove restrictions on the work of foreign sponsors, said the participants of the civil society forum held in Baku.

The forum "Current state of civil society: what to do to trigger change?" was initiated by the Civil Society Protection Committee (CSPC) of Azerbaijan. The event was attended by activists of about 40 NGOs, mass media people, officials from the presidential administration and from embassies.

In the past 2.5 years, the work of the third sector was paralyzed, because the leading NGOs were criminally prosecuted; registration of grants was suspended; bank accounts of non-profit organizations were frozen; and activists were no allowed leaving the country, said Alesker Mamedli, a lawyer, a member of the CSPC and of the NGO "Civil Society Platform".

He pointed to unduly complicated process of NGO registration.

In Azerbaijan, mass media have turned into propaganda mouthpieces of the authorities, said Mekhman Aliev, Director of the "Turan" News Agency. He sees the reasons in media's deprivation of economic independence and curbing advertisers' cooperation with free mass media.

The process of solving these problems has started, said Alimamed Nuriev, the head of the Commission of the Law and Monitoring of the Council of State Support to NGOs under the President of Azerbaijan.

According to his story, "the arrest on bank accounts of 8 NGOs has been lifted, same as the ban on leaving the country of a number of civil society activists; and other issues are being resolved."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.