The workshop on protection of human rights defenders organised by the Institute of Peace and Democracy in Baku, Azerbaijan on February 9-12, 2007 convened 20 human rights defenders (HRDs) from Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, former Soviet countries in Central Asia. The workshop provided training on personal security for HRDs and digital security of their electronic mail and websites. The participants appreciated importance of the training for their work and noted that very often they forget about their own security whilst defending human rights of others.

This workshop is the 1st in a series of HRD protection workshops initiated by the International Coalition for Human Rights, a network inspired and set up at the International Consultation on Women's Human Rights Defenders in Colombo, December 2005. Then, Leyla Yunus of the Institute of Peace and Democracy (Azerbaijan), Tolekan Ismailova of the Citizens against Corruption (Kyrgyzstan), Nozima Kamalova of Legal Aid Society (Uzbekistan) and three other participants from Kazakhstan and Russia announced that they were setting up a network to promote human rights and solidarity among HRDs in the region. Tolekan Ismailova provides personal security training at these workshops based on her personal experience as a HRD persecuted by the Kyrgyz government. The workshops are held in Azerbaijan rather than Uzbekistan as organising such an event in Uzbekistan would be risking arrests and persecution from the government. Human rights situation in both Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan has been deteriorating rapidly with human rights defenders being persecuted, arrested, tortured and killed.

The state of human rights in Uzbekistan is dismal with arbitrary arrests, religious persecution, and torture employed by the government. It has been rapidly deteriorating since the 2005 Andijan massacre with the severe crackdown on human rights defenders, journalists and opposition members as well as new legislation restricting the activities of NGOs and the media. President Karimov fears possible "orange revolution" like the one in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan that resulted in President Akaev's abdication of power in March 2005, only two months prior to Andijan protests in May when hundreds or thousands were killed by the government troops. Estimates of the casualties range from a government figure of 169 dead to as many as 4,500, including women and children, claimed by a senior police officer who participated in the massacre followed by the cover up of dead bodies in mass graves. Two years later, no one has been brought to justice for the massacre. Since then the government of Uzbekistan closed down hundreds of NGOs and ousted American NGOs, including Freedom House and the Eurasia Foundation, that provide support to local NGOs and allegedly "import" orange revolution ideas. Independent NGOs are denied registration by the Ministry of Justice which affects their eligibility to apply for grants and carry out their work.

State repression on freedom of assembly and speech has been tightening in view of the forthcoming 2007 presidential election and has made it almost impossible for local NGOs and groups to function. Since the Andijan events, 13 human rights defenders are currently serving prison sentences, and two others are in custody awaiting trial. In addition, Sanjar Umarov, an Uzbek political opposition leader, and other political dissidents are in prison. About six thousand have been imprisoned on "extremism" charges for their Islamic affiliations, practices and belief that fall outside official religious institutions (Human rights Watch). Uzbek authorities use the Soviet-era technique of forcibly detaining political activists in psychiatric hospitals, especially women human rights defenders, and torturing them. The International Helsinki Federation of Human Rights documented eight cases of women HRDs suffering from persecution: forcible detentions in psychiatric hospitals with forcible injection of psychiatric drugs, beatings, torture, imprisonment, house arrest and constant surveillance.

In Azerbaijan, human rights situation has been deteriorating since Ilham Aliev took over as president from his father, Heydar Aliev, in 2003 as a result of the election marred by widespread fraud. During violent clashes between security forces and demonstrators in Baku on October 15- 16, in which at least one person was killed and several hundred were injured, the authorities unleashed a crackdown against the opposition in which over 1,500 people were detained. Arrests and convictions on political grounds are one of the methods used by the authorities to suppress the opposition. At present, 67 political prisoners remain imprisoned, including Farhad Aliev, former Economic Development Minister of Azerbaijan, arrested in October 2005, just a month before the November 2005 parliamentary elections on allegations of conspiring a coup. Torture, denial of access to lawyers and health care for political prisoners is widespread. "Azerbaijan is a country with the highest number of police per capita and the lowest number of lawyers," noted one of the workshop participants.

Freedom of speech and the media has been severely suppressed with journalists murdered, beaten and taken to court on bogus charges, such as defamation and possession of drugs. At present, there are five imprisoned journalists in Azerbaijan. No one has been brought to justice for attacks on the journalists as well as for the murder of "Monitor" Editor Elmar Huseynov in 2005. In 2006, there were attempts to shutdown independent media such as ANS, restrict distribution of newspapers and control the electronic mass media (IRFS). The state repression is becoming tighter in the view of the forthcoming presidential elections in 2008.

Leyla Yunus, Director of the Institute of Peace and Democracy, has been in the forefront of the Azerbaijan democratic movement since 1988 when she founded the first Azeri NGO for the Protection of Human Rights in then Soviet Azerbaijan, and therefore constantly persecuted by the authorities. She is one of the founders of the Azerbaijan Popular Front (APF) set up in 1989 to struggle for the independence of Azerbaijan from the Soviet Union. Leyla is the first woman on the Board of APF and first woman chief of political party in Azerbaijan. Since 2003 she has been subjected to defamation campaigns with government media accusing her of treason, betrayal of national interests and supporting "terrorists" for her campaign to free political prisoners. Leyla's close ally Mirvari Gahramanli, the head of the Committee of Protection of Oil Workers Rights, was brutally beaten at the rally on August 30, 2003. She suffered brain injury from a policeman's baton hit but was not able to bring legal charges against the offender as under pressure from the police the hospital where Mirvari was treated refused to issue a medical certificate as proof of her injuries. Mirvari's family was also persecuted: her daughter was beaten and sacked from her job and her daughter's husband was dismissed from his job.

One of the important outcomes of APWLD's participation at the HRD workshop in Baku was new alliances forged with the Azeri and Uzbek WHRDs to launch a Central Asian WHRD campaign on November 29, 2007 (Women's Human Rights Day) with a Central Asian WHRD workshop to start a documentation project on violations against WHRDs in Central Asian countries: Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. The documentation report will be submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders on November 29, 2008. The campaign will bring in a feminist perspective into HRD issues in Central Asia, recognition of their gender specific vulnerabilities and visibility to WHRDs who are normally embarrassed to speak out about gender specific abuses against them.