Lawyer Ramute Remezaite was denied entry to Azerbaijan last week after arriving on a flight from London – becoming one of many international human rights monitors and journalists to be barred from the country in recent years.
The Azerbaijani government pursued a “sustained crackdown” on independent and critical voices in 2016, with 25 human rights defenders currently imprisoned on politically motivated charges according to the latest Human Rights Watch World Report.
“Now it is my turn to know that I am a persona non grata in Azerbaijan,” Remezaite told Turan News Agency, noting that she likely will not be able to return to Azerbaijan for some time.
“If you defend human rights and don’t keep silent when rights and freedoms are violated in this country, they will not let you in”, she told Meydan TV.
Remezaite arrived at Baku airport on February 7 with a valid visa received from the Embassy of Azerbaijan in London, but was told by border control officers that there was a “mark” by her name in their system meaning she could not enter the country.
The lawyer was held for eight hours overnight, without her passport and accompanied by three airport security personnel. Her requests for an explanation were denied.
Though officials stressed that she had not violated any immigration rules and was not being deported, Remezaite was later escorted onto a plane to Istanbul.
Remezaite is a human rights lawyer who has worked on Azerbaijan for the past five years, representing individuals from the country, as well as from Russia and Georgia, at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She has published several articles on human rights violations in Azerbaijan.
Remezaite was traveling to Azerbaijan in relation to her work.
Monitoring Azerbaijan’s human rights abuses has become increasingly difficult, with many local independent media outlets suppressed in recent years.
Neither the Border Service nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to requests for comments on the detention of the lawyer.
