Together with the Committee to Protect Journalists and two other prominent NGOs, ISLP wrote and filed an amicus curiae brief with the European Court of Human Rights in the notorious case of Azerbaijani journalist and human rights defender, Emin Huseynov.
Huseynov, now living in exile in Switzerland, is the director and co-founder of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), a leading Azerbaijani NGO which protects freedom of expression. To retaliate for his criticism, the Azerbaijani government stripped him of his citizenship. In his application to the Strasbourg Court, the word “Stateless” appears in the blank for “Nationality.”
Our brief collected cases from around the globe concerning the use of denationalization as a tool of political persecution infringing on freedom of expression. Denationalization is among the wide range of repressive tactics deployed by the regime in Baku to silence peaceful critics, including imprisonment, torture, harassment, threats, travel bans, and prosecution.