Azerbaijan’s hijab restrictions assert the state’s authority over a decision as personal as what women and girls wear. The current controversy reopens a longstanding conflict that was never resolved. In November 2010, schools began excluding girls wearing headscarves following the education minister’s insistence on uniform requirements. This enforcement subsequently eased, after the wave of protests and arrests but the conflict implicitly continued. The topic became hot again, where new changes in administrative practice left pupils vulnerable to renewed exclusion.

September was one of the harshest months of the year for Azerbaijan’s political prisoners, with long sentences in the “NGO case,” new arrests, allegations of abuse in prisons, and a pardon that appeared tied to an EU sanctions deal.

August brought a new form of retaliation against the nine Toplum TV journalists sentenced in July, five of them were placed in punishment cells for asking for drinking water. APFP chair Ali Karimli collapsed from dehydration in court after his cell’s water and electricity were cut.