THINK TANK CONDEMNS AZERBAIJAN FOR SILENCING MEDIA AND OPPOSITION

Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran
Nov 27 2006

The Azerbaijani government’s aggressive moves to silence independent
media and the leading opposition party last week not only raise obvious
human rights problems but will have a detrimental effect on efforts
to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said the Brussels-based
think tank, the International Crisis Group, Monday.

On November 24, the Azeri authorities took the country’s first,
biggest and most professional independent TV and radio broadcaster,
ANS, off the air.

The same day, police forcibly evicted the key opposition party, the
Azerbaijan Popular Front Party, two opposition dailies Azadlig and
Bizim Yol and the Turan information agency from their Baku offices,
said the ICG in a statement.

"Following a pattern of harassment of Azerbaijan’s independent
journalists since 2003, Friday’s events once again put into question
Azerbaijan’s commitment to protecting freedom of speech and upholding
the rule of law."

The think tank said Azerbaijan’s international partners — the EU and
its member states, the US, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and others
— should in unequivocal terms call on the government of President
Ilham Aliev to restore media freedoms protected in the Azerbaijani
Constitution and in commitments made as a member of the OSCE and the
Council of Europe, and as a recent signatory of an EU Neighborhood
Action Plan.