ROME, Oct 10 (IPS) – On November 20, 2023, Ulvi Hasanli, director of AbzasMedia —an unbiased media outlet in Azerbaijan—, was arrested when he was about to board a taxi to Baku airport. In the meantime, uniformed officers raided AbzasMedia’s headquarters within the Azerbaijani capital, claiming to have discovered 40,000 euros in money, which was used as proof to accuse Hasanli of foreign money smuggling.
“I suppose we had been specializing in matters too delicate for the federal government,” explains Leyla Mustafayeva by way of videoconference from Berlin to IPS. She has been the brand new editor-in-chief of AbzasMedia since February.
This 41-year-old Azerbaijani journalist recollects that a type of “too delicate” matters needed to do with Nagorno-Karabakh, the enclave in Azerbaijani territory from which the Armenian minority was expelled in September 2023.
“We investigated the contracts awarded for reconstruction within the space and found that many firms belonged to high-ranking authorities officers,” explains the journalist. The second concern handled a synthetic lake the place poisonous waste from a gold mine was being dumped.
Along with masking protests that had been brutally suppressed, the journalists needed to go additional.
“The locals are affected by severe well being issues. We needed to take samples to test cyanide ranges within the soil and water however the village was underneath police management,” recollects Mustafayeva, who has been exiled since 2017.
It was that yr when her husband, Afqan Mukhtarli, an Azerbaijani journalist and human rights defender, was arrested in Georgia and transferred to Azerbaijan in a joint operation between Tbilisi and Baku.
Immediately, six journalists from AbzasMedia are listed amongst 23 journalists presently in jail in Azerbaijan. The nation ranks 164th out of 180 within the World Press Freedom Index printed yearly by Reporters With out Borders.
Observers agree that repression has escalated since 2023. The United Nations Local weather Change Convention 2024 (COP29) will happen from November 11 to 22 in Baku.
“Baku seeks to silence any dissenting voice in what was presupposed to be an amazing yr for Azerbaijan,” concludes Mustafayeva.
“Repressive State”
The present president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, took workplace in 2003, succeeding his father in energy in a rustic wealthy in fuel and oil. The latter is an element that strengthens the regime’s stability and in addition opens many doorways within the worldwide area.
However its fame appears inversely proportional to its wealth.
The American NGO Freedom Home labels Azerbaijan as “one of many least free locations on this planet.” It additionally ranks 154th out of 180 international locations within the 2023 Corruption Notion Index compiled by Transparency Worldwide, a platform working in 100 international locations.
On September 24, Human Rights Watch reminded that that is “the third consecutive yr the COP is held in a repressive state that severely limits freedom of expression and peaceable meeting” (the earlier ones had been Dubai and Egypt).
“You might say that the West has failed Azerbaijani civil society. It is clear that the precedence is power, not human rights,” Arzu Geybulla, an unbiased Azerbaijani journalist, advised IPS by way of videoconference from Istanbul.
She hasn’t set foot in her nation since she was accused of “treason” in 2014 for having labored for Agos, an Istanbul-based Armenian newspaper. She says that the Armenian concern and something associated to the Azerbaijani household in energy for the previous three a long time are two crimson strains for journalists and activists.
“Repression has worsened in recent times. Journalists on the bottom are fully defenceless towards all types of threats, primarily as a result of they lack authorized safety,” Geybulla denounces.
She refers to measures just like the so-called “Media Regulation”, handed in 2022. The Committee to Shield Journalists denounced that the decree elevated authorities management over the press, making it simpler to ban and shut down media shops.
Nevertheless, journalists aren’t the one ones being focused.
Probably the most well-known latest instances is that of Gubad Ibadoghlu, a professor on the London College of Economics and a famend human rights defender in Azerbaijan. He additionally labored on the United Nations Conference towards Corruption.
On July 23, 2023, Ibadoghlu was travelling along with his spouse when their automobile was pushed right into a ditch by three different autos. The couple was brutally overwhelmed by brokers in plainclothes and later taken to police custody in Baku.
After spending the primary six months in a small cell shared with 5 different inmates and being disadvantaged of his drugs (he’s diabetic), Ibadoghlu stays underneath home arrest awaiting trial on costs of “smuggling international foreign money” and “propagation of extremist concepts.” He’s not allowed to make use of a cellphone, and his visits are restricted.
“It was a message to everybody: if they’ll arrest somebody like him, they’ll arrest anybody,” explains his daughter Zhala Bayramova, a human rights lawyer, chatting with IPS by cellphone from the Swedish metropolis of Lund.
The police additionally claimed to have discovered 40,000 euros in a wardrobe in his workplace, regardless of the presence of a secure. Apart from the recurring sum, the 26-year-old lawyer factors to a sample in repression campaigns.
“In 2003, they focused the political opposition; in 2013, NGOs; and now it is journalists, researchers, and lecturers,” the Azerbaijani girl emphasizes.
“There have at all times been political prisoners in Azerbaijan,” she provides.
Silence
Journalists in Azerbaijan contacted by IPS pointed to more and more tough working circumstances.
“Taking only one photograph on the road can land you in jail. There are cops in all places; it is like an enormous open-air jail,” a journalist advised IPS by cellphone earlier than asking to not reveal his id for concern of reprisals.
The Ministry of Inside, the Ministry of Justice, the Press Division and the Baku Police refused to reply the questions forwarded by IPS by way of e mail.
In the meantime, arrests proceed. On August 21, Bahruz Samadov, an Azerbaijani political analyst pursuing doctoral research on the College of Prague, was arrested.
After the police searched his house on suspicion of drug trafficking and allegedly discovered 40,000 euros in money, Samadov was ultimately charged with “treason.”
A couple of days later, one other Azerbaijani researcher, Cavid Aga, was detained on the airport and interrogated by intelligence companies about Samadov. He was about to fly to Lithuania to proceed his research however is now banned from leaving the nation. Dozens of journalists and activists immediately face this similar ban.
Aga, 31, constructed a fame as an observer, translating information and official statements, and offering context in the course of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh struggle. Baku then took management of two-thirds of the territory held by Armenians after a 44-day confrontation.
“Though there is a new era in energy, Azerbaijan remains to be doing what it has at all times achieved,” Aga tells IPS by way of videoconference from Baku.
Aga ignores when the ban on leaving the nation will likely be lifted and is concerned in a authorized course of to make clear his scenario. He admits being rather more cautious in his statements “for apparent causes.” The federal government, he stresses, “has managed to make individuals afraid to talk.”
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedAuthentic supply: Inter Press Service
