BLOGGERS IMPRISONED FOR POSTING DONKEY VIDEO ON YOUTUBE
By Emma Hartley
Daily Telegraph
3:52PM BST 01 Sep 2009
UK
Mild spoof of their government and media lands two twenty-something
Azerbaijanis in jail
Two Azerbaijani bloggers face up to five years in prison for posting
a video on YouTube of a donkey giving a press conference.
Adnan, Hajizade, 26, and Emin Milli, 29, posted the satirical video,
which has English subtitles, in a send-up of Azerbaijani government
and media.
The video is tame by Western standards. Yet shortly after the video
was released Mr Hajizade and Mr Milli were arrested after a scuffle
at a restaurant in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, and are being held
under a two-month pre-trial detention order.
Isakhan Ashurov, the pair’s lawyer, said: "This incident is definitely
politically motivated. My clients did not beat anybody. Quite the
opposite."
According to Amnesty International’s website, the two young men were
discussing online activism when two well-built men were said to have
approached their group, demanded that they stop talking about politics,
and assaulted Mr Milli and Mr Hajizade.
The assault reportedly resulted in injuries to them, including the
breaking of Mr Hajizade’s nose and injury to Mr Milli’s leg.
They went to the police to lodge a complaint. However, rather than
allowing them to do so, the police detained fir st Mr Hajizade and
then Mr Milli when the latter reportedly refused to leave the police
station without his fellow activist.
Both are said to have been charged with "hooliganism carried out by
a group of people", which carries up to five years’ imprisonment.
The alleged assailants were reportedly discharged.
Azerbaijan is a secular presidential republic, which got its
independence from the former USSR in 1991.
It is it is bounded by the Caspian sea to the east, Russia to the
north, Georgia to the north-west, Armenia to the west, and Iran to
the south.
Reporters without Borders, a Paris-based organisation, released
a statement saying that the decision to hold the bloggers was
"disproportionate" and "typical of arbitrary judicial decisions taken
with government opponents".
The UN’s human rights committee also raised concerns about the arrests
and issued a statement condemning "extensive limitations to the right
to freedom of expression in Azerbaijan".
Although Azerbaijan is nominally a representative democracy and is
a member of the UN’s Human Rights Council, recent elections were
contested and abuses of civil rights and freedom of the press are
frequently reported.
The 2008 Freedom in the World report by US-based Freedom House, which
tries to measure democracy and political freedom, labeled Azerbaijan a
"not free country". Freedom House w as founded by Eleanor Roosevelt
in 1941.