Calling for the Immediate Release of Dr. Gubad Ibadoghlu

Floor Speech

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call on the Government of Azerbaijan to immediately release Dr. Gubad Ibadoghlu, a courageous pro-democracy activist, brilliant economist, and beloved husband and father, who has been unjustly detained for over seven months.

On July 23, 2023, Dr. Ibadoghlu and his wife, Irada Bayramova, were forced out of their car near Baku, Azerbaijan, seized by masked individuals, detained, and beaten. Dr. Ibadoghlu had returned to Azerbaijan earlier in July from a visiting fellowship at the London School of Economics to care for his ailing mother. Though Ms. Bayramova was released hours later, Dr. Ibadoghlu was not released. Ms. Bayramova and her family have been denied communication with her husband and she continues to expenence Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from this harrowing ordeal. The ``charges'' that President Ilham Aliyev's government has used to justify Dr. Ibadoghlu's detention and imprisonment without trial--that he organized the production of counterfeit money to support a political group and, as an avowed secularist, disseminates material that supports religious extremism-- are so dubious and baseless that they would qualify as satire in another context.

Dr. Ibadoghlu's true ``crime'' against the Aliyev regime is his devotion to the causes of democracy, freedom and anti-corruption in Azerbaijan. He is detained today because he bravely chose to return to Azerbaijan to care for his mother despite fleeing the country in 2017 to teach abroad after his civic activism prompted threats of retaliation. As an internationally acclaimed economist, he has also served as a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, and Rutgers University. He was a 2015 Fulbright Scholar, a 2015 Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, a 2018 Prague Civil Society Center Fellow, and a recipient of the 2018 Civil Society Scholar Award by the Open Society Fund.

During Dr. Ibadoghlu's seven-month detention, he has been subjected to crowded and inhumane conditions common to Azerbaijan's jails and denied sustained access to critical medication. Dr. Ibadoghlu's family is increasingly concerned that he has been denied the medication and medical treatment that he desperately needs to treat his chronic health conditions. He has additionally been repeatedly denied access to his legal counsel and has not received a fair trial while in custody. I join my fellow Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Embassy in Baku, U.S. academic institutions and organizations, the European Parliament, and others in the international community to express my deep concerns about Dr. Ibadoghlu's health and demand his immediate release.

I commend Emin Bayramli, one of Dr. Ibadoghlu's sons who lives in my district, and his entire family for their steadfastness in seeking their father's freedom from his unjust imprisonment. I also commend my colleague Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey for adopting Dr. Ibadoghlu through the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission's Defending Freedoms Project.

Dr. Ibadoghlu is one of far too many Azerbaijanis that the Aliyev regime has unjustly detained to suppress freedom and civil rights. The Government of Azerbaijan's poor record of respecting human rights, civil rights and civil liberties is a moral stain that affects free people everywhere. Whether they live in Washington, D.C. or Baku, Hong Kong or Beijing, Moscow or Kyiv, everyone should have the right to determine their own destiny. Dr. Ibadoghlu's unjust imprisonment must end immediately.

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