AZERBAIJANI GOVERNMENT REMAINED ONE OF REGION’S WORST JAILERS OF JOURNALISTS: CPJ

news.am
Feb 17 2010
Armenia

"Using imprisonment as a crude form of censorship, the authoritarian
government of President Ilham Aliyev remained one of the region’s
worst jailers of journalists," reads "Attacks on the Press 2009:
Azerbaijan" report issued by Committee to Protect Journalists
(CPJ). NEWS.am posts the excerpts.

"Political dissent and independent voices, already in short supply,
came under assault again as Aliyev tightened his grip on the oil-rich
Caspian Sea nation. In March, his government brought before voters
a constitutional amendment to remove presidential term limits,
effectively allowing Aliyev to remain in office for life. The measure,
which passed by a wide margin, was criticized by opposition politicians
and the international community. Aliyev was elected to a second term
in 2008 after electoral laws were changed to restrict participation by
opposition politicians. Aliyev effectively inherited the presidency
from his father, Heydar, himself leader of Azerbaijan for more than
30 years.

In January, the BBC and the U.S. government-funded broadcasters Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America were forced
to halt FM transmissions in response to a National Television and
Radio Council decision to ban international stations from domestic
frequencies. Radio Azadlyg, the popular Azerbaijani service of
RFE/RL, had become a particularly important alternative news source
for citizens.

The only independent Azerbaijani channel with national reach, ANS,
toned down its criticism of the government since regulators suspended
its license for five months beginning in November 2006.

Low-circulation print media had more editorial freedom, but their
impact on public opinion was small. And with authorities cracking down
on critical journalists–using criminal defamation charges to demand
jail time and high monetary damages–few reporters were willing to
cover sensitive topics, the most dangerous of which was reporting on
Aliyev and his family.

The state’s intolerance of critical voices reached its lowest,
and cruelest, point in August when Novruzali Mamedov, editor of
a now-defunct minority newspaper, died in prison, two years into a
10-year sentence on a trumped-up treason charge. A Penitentiary Service
spokesman said the 68-year-old Mamedov had suffered a stroke–and
the journalist’s lawyer, family, colleagues, and supporters charged
that authorities bore responsibility. Mamedov’s health had severely
deteriorated in the months before his death, they said, and the editor
had repeatedly complained of inadequate medical care.

Defense lawyer Ramiz Mamedov (no relation to the journalist) said
his client had suffered from hypertension, bronchitis, neuritis,
and a prostate tumor, among other ailments.

Authorities refused to release Mamedov on humanitarian grounds or allow
independent medical care. Mamedov’s family filed a lawsuit against
the Azerbaijani Penitentiary Service and officials at Prison No. 15,
where the editor had been held. The case was pending in late year.

Mamedov’s death in state custody threw into sharp relief the plight
of six other members of the news media who were being held in jail
for their work when CPJ conducted its annual worldwide census of
imprisoned journalists on December 1.

Three journalists–Sakit Zakhidov of the pro-opposition daily Azadlyg,
Asif Marzili of the independent weekly Tezadlar, and Ali Hasanov of
the pro-government daily Ideal–were granted early release from prison
in April under a pardon act passed by parliament the month before.

Seeing the amnesty, some analysts expressed hope that the government
might ease its heavy-handed repression of the Azerbaijani press corps.

Those hopes were soon dashed as the government opened its revolving
prison door to four more journalists.

Two were being held on defamation charges, CPJ research showed. In
October, Editor-in-Chief Sardar Alibeili and reporter Faramaz
Novruzoglu of the weekly newspaper Nota were given three-month prison
terms after they said in several articles that a civic group and its
leader were little more than government mouthpieces.

International monitors–including those with the Vienna-based
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe–have frequently
criticized the government for its refusal to decriminalize defamation.

But while defamation has been a favorite tool in silencing the press,
IRFS director Huseynov noted that officials have been inventive in
using laws as far-ranging as treason and hooliganism.

Take the case of two video bloggers–30-year-old Emin Milli and
26-year-old Adnan Hajizade–who were arrested in July after posting a
series of sketches criticizing government policies. A satirical video
the bloggers produced and posted on YouTube in June may have been a
particular trigger for reprisal. The video criticized the country’s
importation of donkeys, supposedly at high prices. The sketch depicted
a fictional press conference at which Hajizade, wearing a donkey suit,
talked to a group of Azerbaijani &’journalists.’

In an Orwellian scenario, Milli and Hajizade were taken into custody
after they went to a police station to report an assault. The pair
had been debating politics with friends at a Baku restaurant when two
unidentified men interrupted the conversation and started a brawl,
local press reports said. By the time the bloggers arrived at the
police station, the two assailants had supposedly filed a complaint
and officers had already decided what to do. Without investigating,
police charged Milli and Hajizade with &’hooliganism’ and &’inflicting
minor bodily harm,’ the Azerbaijani press reported. On November 11, a
Sabail District Court judge pronounced the bloggers guilty, sentencing
Milli to two and a half years in jail and Hajizade to two years.

CPJ decried the case as entrapment and noted that the circumstances
were strikingly similar to the 2007 jailing of Genimet Zakhidov, editor
of Azadlyg. Zakhidov was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison
for &’hooliganism’ and &’inflicting minor bodily harm’ after a pair
of strangers accosted him on a Baku street, then supposedly filed a
police complaint claiming they had been the victims. In September,
a Baku judge denied an appeal for a lighter sentence because Zakhidov
had been reprimanded in prison for not joining a volleyball game,
IRFS reported.

In November, CPJ honored one imprisoned journalist whose case was
emblematic of the government’s efforts to silence its critics. Eynulla
Fatullayev, a recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award,
was imprisoned in April 2007 on a series of fabricated charges,
including terrorism and defamation. Fatullayev, editor of the
now-closed independent Russian-language weekly Realny Azerbaijan
and the Azeri-language daily Gundalik Azarbaycan, was jailed in
retaliation for his investigation into the 2005 murder of his former
boss and mentor, Elmar Huseynov. Fatullayev had alleged an official
cover-up in the case.

Reporting from or about the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic–a western
exclave that borders Armenia, Iran, and Turkey–remained Azerbaijan’s
most dangerous assignment. Only a handful of reporters worked in
the territory, and they faced intimidation and harassment from local
security agents. In February 2009, Idrak Abbasov, a reporter with the
Baku-based independent newspaper Zerkalo and a researcher with IRFS,
traveled to Nakhchivan to study local press freedom conditions. Agents
with the Nakhchivan Ministry of National Security (MNB) blindfolded
him, took his identity papers, camera, notebook, and cell phone,
and interrogated him for hours about his trip. An unidentified agent
demanded that Abbasov reveal the names of his colleagues in the
region, cursed at him, and accused him of being a spy for Armenia,
the journalist told CPJ after his detention. Before releasing him,
officers deleted images from his camera and ordered him to leave
Nakhchivan immediately.

Abbasov told CPJ that agents had lured him to an MNB station on the
pretext that they would answer questions. He said the mistreatment
left him with stress-induced heart problems that required several
days of hospitalization."