Democracy Now! Interview with Gubad Ibadoghlu’s Daughter, Zhala Bayramova

November 19, 2024

In Baku, Azerbaijan, Democracy Now! continues their coverage of COP29, the 2024 U.N. climate summit, and its host country’s record on human rights. Posted below, Amy Goodman interviews Zhala Bayramova, daughter of Consortium Scholar, Gubad Ibadoghlu, who remains under house arrest in Azerbaijan.

“Zhala Bayramova, a human rights lawyer focused on LGBTQ rights. Their father Gubad Ibadoghlu is one of hundreds of Azerbaijani political prisoners targeted for his criticism of corruption and the fossil fuel industry. Ibadoghlu and his wife were violently assaulted and threatened in July of 2023, and Ibadoghlu has been detained ever since. ‘The reason that they did this, the way that they physically assaulted my parents and brutally attacked them, is because they wanted to show everybody and to create also a chilling effect,’ says Bayramova, who notes that the country’s arrests of activists appear to have aligned with its preparations to host the U.N. climate summit, as the regime sought to ‘clean up the streets.'”