Media outlets in Azerbaijan routinely deal with torture, assault, raids, imprisonment and endless intimidation, as verified reports submitted to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project show.
For Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev and many other authoritarian leaders across the world, independent journalism and what it represents is bad news.
Azerbaijan’s record on press freedom has never been great. Since independence, the country’s journalists have faced serious harassment.
It does not take a lot of time and effort to see that when it comes to Azerbaijan, views on the country’s freedom of expression record split in two. Azerbaijani blogger Arzu Geybulla writes
• Human rights defender Leyla Yunus is detained again