ROME, Oct 10 (IPS) – On November 20, 2023, Ulvi Hasanli, director of AbzasMedia —an independent media outlet in Azerbaijan—was arrested as he was about to take a taxi to Baku airport. Meanwhile, uniformed officers raided AbzasMedia’s headquarters in the Azerbaijani capital and claimed to have found 40,000 euros in cash, which was used as evidence to charge Hasanli with money smuggling.
“I think we focused on topics that were too sensitive for the government,” Leyla Mustafayeva explained to the IPS via videoconference from Berlin. Since February she has been the new editor-in-chief of AbzasMedia.
This 41-year-old Azerbaijani journalist recalls that one of those “too sensitive” topics had to do with Nagorno-Karabakh, the enclave on Azerbaijani territory from which the Armenian minority was expelled in September 2023.
“We examined the contracts awarded for reconstruction in the area and discovered that many companies were owned by high-ranking government officials,” the journalist explains. The second issue concerned an artificial lake where toxic waste from a gold mine was dumped.
The journalists did not just want to report on protests that were brutally suppressed, but wanted to go further.
“The local population suffers from serious health problems. We wanted to take samples to check cyanide levels in the soil and water, but the village was under police control,” recalls Mustafayeva, who has been exiled since 2017.
It was that year 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.
Today, six journalists from AbzasMedia are listed among the 23 journalists currently in prison in Azerbaijan. The country ranks 164th out of 180 countries World Press Freedom Index published annually by Reporters Without Borders.
Observers agree that repression has escalated since 2023. The United Nations Climate Change Conference 2024 (COP29) will take place in Baku from November 11 to 22.
“Baku is trying to silence every dissenting voice in what should have been a great year for Azerbaijan,” Mustafayeva concluded.
“Repressive state”
Azerbaijan’s current president, Ilham Aliyev, took office in 2003, succeeding his father in a country rich in gas and oil. The latter is a factor that strengthens the stability of the regime and also opens many doors in the international arena.
But his reputation seems inversely proportional to his wealth.
The American NGO Freedom House labels Azerbaijan as “one of the least free places in the world.” It also ranks 154th out of 180 countries in the Corruption Perception Index 2023 compiled by Transparency International, a platform active in 100 countries.
On September 24, Human Rights Watch recalled that this is “the third consecutive year that the COP has been held in a repressive state that severely restricts freedom of expression and peaceful assembly” (the previous ones were Dubai and Egypt).
“You could say that the West has failed Azerbaijani civil society. It is clear that energy is the priority and not human rights,” said Arzu Geybulla, an independent Azerbaijani journalist, via video conference from Istanbul.
She has not set foot in her country since being accused of “treason” in 2014 for working for Agos, an Armenian newspaper based in Istanbul. She says that the Armenian issue and everything related to the Azerbaijani family that has been in power for the past thirty years are two red lines for journalists and activists.
“Repression has worsened in recent years. Journalists on the ground are completely defenseless against all kinds of threats, especially because they have no legal protection,” Geybulla denounces.
She refers to measures such as the so-called ‘Media Act’, adopted in 2022. The Committee to Protect Journalists indicted that the decree increases government control over the press, making it easier to ban and close media outlets.
However, journalists are not the only ones being targeted.
One of the most famous recent cases is that of Gubad Ibadoghlu, a professor at the London School of Economics and a renowned human rights defender in Azerbaijan. He also worked on the United Nations Convention against Corruption.
On July 23, 2023, Ibadoghlu was traveling with his wife when their car was pushed into a ditch by three other vehicles. The couple was brutally beaten by plainclothes officers and later taken to the police in Baku.
After spending the first six months in a small cell shared with five other prisoners and being deprived of his medication (he has diabetes), Ibadoghlu remains under house arrest awaiting trial on charges of ‘smuggling foreign currency’ and ‘spreading extremist ideas’. He is not allowed to use a telephone and his visits are limited.
“It was a message to everyone: if they can arrest someone like him, they can arrest anyone,” his daughter Zhala Bayramova, a human rights lawyer, explained to IPS from the Swedish city of Lund.
The police also allegedly found 40,000 euros in a wardrobe at his office, despite the presence of a safe. Apart from the recurring amount, the 26-year-old lawyer points to a pattern in the repression campaigns.
“In 2003 they focused on the political opposition; in 2013 on NGOs; and now they are journalists, researchers and academics,” the Azerbaijani woman emphasizes.
“There have always been political prisoners in Azerbaijan,” she adds.
Silence
Journalists in Azerbaijan contacted by IPS pointed to increasingly difficult working conditions.
“If you take just one photo on the street, you can end up in jail. There are police officers everywhere; it’s like a huge open-air prison,” a journalist tells IPS by phone, before asking not to reveal his identity for fear of reprisals.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the press department and the Baku police refused to answer the questions forwarded by the IPS via email.
In the meantime, the arrests continue. On August 21, Bahruz Samadov, an Azerbaijani political analyst pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Prague, was arrested.
After police searched his apartment on suspicion of drug trafficking and reportedly found 40,000 euros in cash, Samadov was eventually charged with ‘treason’.
A few days later, another Azerbaijani researcher, Cavid Aga, was detained at the airport and questioned by intelligence services about Samadov. He was about to fly to Lithuania to continue his studies, but is now no longer allowed to leave the country. Dozens of journalists and activists face the same ban today.
Aga, 31, built a reputation as an observer, translating news and official statements and providing context during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Baku subsequently took control of two-thirds of the territory from the Armenians after a 44-day standoff .
“Although there is a new generation in power, Azerbaijan is still doing what it has always done,” Aga said via video conference from Baku.
Aga ignores when the ban on leaving the country is lifted and is involved in a legal process to clarify his situation. He admits that he is much more cautious in his statements “for obvious reasons.” The government, he points out, “has succeeded in making people afraid to speak.”
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service