Azerbaijan’s Vafa Naghi targeted by pro-government media for support of anti COP protest

Prominent Azerbaijani activist Vafa Naghi has come under attack from pro-government media and others in Azerbaijan for taking part in a demonstration in Tbilisi against Azerbaijan’s hosting of the COP29 summit.

As the UN’s annual climate conference kicked off on 11 November in Baku, Naghi attended a demonstration along with Georgian and Armenian activists in Tbilisi organised by the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Thurnberg boycotted the conference citing the human rights situation in Azerbaijan, and accusing the government of carrying out ethnic cleansing of Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh region. 

Thunberg also referenced the now four-year closure of Azerbaijan’s land border, explaining, ‘the population in Azerbaijan is trapped. They can’t travel in or out of the country except through the airport.’.

[Listen on OC Media: Podcast | Greta Thunberg on COP29 in Azerbaijan]

Azerbaijani participants of the demonstration wore masks to hide their identity over fears of retribution.

‘The purpose of holding it during COP29 was to attract more attention to this conference, to the problems in the Caucasus. First of all, it demonstrated the solidarity of the Caucasian people against holding COP29 in an authoritarian country’, Naghi told OC Media. 

Naghi, who previously sat as one of the only anti-government municipal councillors in the country, ran unsuccessfully for parliament in the 2024 parliamentary elections.

Following her participation in the demonstration in Tbilisi, Naghi faced what appeared to be a coordinated campaign against her in pro-government media and on social media.

Tanzila Rustamkhanli, who ran against Naghi in 2024, told the pro-government media outlet Yeni Musavat that Naghi’s actions amounted to ‘treason against the state and people of Azerbaijan’, and called for legal measures to be taken in response to her ‘betrayal’. 

‘[Naghi] has been acting against Azerbaijan for several years, carrying out orders from foreign forces that are hostile to Azerbaijan. Anti-Azerbaijani activities will continue to expand if the relevant state bodies do not take legal measures against her’, Rustamkhanli added.  

There has been speculation Rustamkhanli was chosen to be a conduit for the government’s criticism because of their past electoral competition. 

Naghi said the reason for the fury from government trolls on social media was a poster that an Armenian activist held during a protest describing the exodus of the entire population from Nagorno-Karabakh as ethnic cleansing.

‘Even though the photo shows that I am not holding this poster, I am still being insulted, but I have also stated directly on social media that I believe that the flight of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh was ethnic cleansing’, Naghi said

Naghi was attacked not only by pro-government media or government officials, but also by Natig Jarfarli, the leader of the opposition REAL party. Jafarli criticised Naghi and claimed that the government allowed her parliamentary campaign to go ahead as a ‘token’ opposition. 

‘In the last elections, when a “token hero” was created in Neftchala, we were silent and did not express our opinion […] while the government itself was interested in developing this issue’, he said.

In response to the criticism, Naghi said, that ‘to blacken someone’s name is a method that the government uses, and now Jafarli has also used this method to blacken my name in the eyes of society.’ 

Naghi has defended her participation in the demonstration in Tbilisi.

‘One of the main slogans of the action was “a united Caucasus will never be defeated” ’, she said, ‘and as Caucasian feminists, we thought that Caucasians could solve their own problems, that is, their local problems, based on solidarity.’ 

‘Because these countries are closely connected, and if something happens in one, it necessarily affects the others.’

Read in Georgian on On.ge.