Journalists’ rights worsen in Azerbaijan, says HRW

Daily Times, Pakistan
April 28 2007

WASHINGTON: Press freedom is deteriorating in Azerbaijan with five
journalists jailed in the past 10 months, Human Rights Watch warned,
citing a new case of an editor jailed for libel and "insult."

"The steady rise of politically motivated defamation charges and
violent attacks against critical journalists is clearly aimed
at silencing critical voices in Azerbaijan," said Holly Cartner,
the group’s director for Europe and Central Asia, in a statement
Thursday. A court in Baku on April 20 jailed Eynulla Fatullayev,
editor of the independent newspapers Realni Azerbaijan and Gundelik
Azerbaijan, for "criminal libel" and "insult," the New York-based group
(HRW) said.

Fatullayev denied the charges, which were based on an Internet
posting in which he was alleged to have blamed Azerbaijanis for a
1992 massacre in a village in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region disputed
by Armenia and Azerbaijan. The two countries fought a war over the
territory in the early 1990s that claimed an estimated 35,000 lives
and caused about a million people on both sides to flee their homes.

The person bringing the charges "alleged that the statement defamed
the village’s residents." "Fatullayev’s prosecution was politically
motivated, and he should be immediately released from custody," Cartner
said. The journalist is known for his criticism of Azeri officials and
for exposing government corruption. Fatullayev is the fifth journalist
to be imprisoned in Azerbaijan in the last 10 months, HRW said.