Today the international free expression community bids farewell to Rafiq Tagi, who died on 23 November in Baku.
I met Rafiq Tagi in September 2010 in a cafe in a run-down office building in central Baku. As a member of the International Partnership Group for Azerbaijan, I’d travelled there to assess the climate for free expression in the country. He was there with other journalists and activists to talk about prison conditions, and what it was like to be jailed for publishing in a country where airing critical views often comes at a severe price.
Despite being imprisoned for criticising Islam, the outspoken writer and editor-in-chief of Senet newspaper was anxious to talk about the declining state of free expression in Azerbaijan as well as his own experiences. I remember he smiled a lot and was impatient while waiting for the translator to tell our group what he had to say.
In some ways, he half-joked, he felt the Azerbaijani government had ordered his arrest in 2007 “to save his life”. Possibly there was some truth in this. In Azerbaijan, those who physically attack journalists are never brought to justice and the cycle of impunity there is truly shocking. And after the publication of a controversial article, “Europe and us”, in 2006, Rafiq not only received death threats, but was handed down a fatwa by Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani.
Tagi was stabbed last Saturday in Baku and was thought to be in stable condition. In an interview conducted from his hospital bed, he said he’d probably been attacked for a recent article he’d written about Iran.
I saw him a day or two after the cafe meeting last year, at a free expression conference in Baku. Many government officials were invited to the forum; none of them attended. Rafiq was there, smiling again and hoping for change. He said that international support calling for the release of journalists was crucial, but agreed with another journalist who pointed out that Azerbaijan’s poor record on freedom of expression was a problem Azerbaijanis would have to solve, for the most part, on their own.
Six weeks later, Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade, who had been arrested for criticising the government, were released just days after the country’s parliamentary elections. In June this year, investigative journalist Eynulla Fatullayev was released too. But more than six years on from the murder of Elmar Huseynov, no one has even been investigated for his death. And now Rafiq Tagi, who asked difficult questions about his country’s future, is no longer here to help his colleagues bring freedom of expression to Azerbaijan.
Today the international free expression community bids farewell to Rafiq Tagi, who died on 23 November in Baku.
I met Rafiq Tagi in September 2010 in a cafe in a run-down office building in central Baku. As a member of the International Partnership Group for Azerbaijan, I’d travelled there to assess the climate for free expression in the country. He was there with other journalists and activists to talk about prison conditions, and what it was like to be jailed for publishing in a country where airing critical views often comes at a severe price.
Despite being imprisoned for criticising Islam, the outspoken writer and editor-in-chief of Senet newspaper was anxious to talk about the declining state of free expression in Azerbaijan as well as his own experiences. I remember he smiled a lot and was impatient while waiting for the translator to tell our group what he had to say.
In some ways, he half-joked, he felt the Azerbaijani government had ordered his arrest in 2007 “to save his life”. Possibly there was some truth in this. In Azerbaijan, those who physically attack journalists are never brought to justice and the cycle of impunity there is truly shocking. And after the publication of a controversial article, “Europe and us”, in 2006, Rafiq not only received death threats, but was handed down a fatwa by Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani.
Tagi was stabbed last Saturday in Baku and was thought to be in stable condition. In an interview conducted from his hospital bed, he said he’d probably been attacked for a recent article he’d written about Iran.
I saw him a day or two after the cafe meeting last year, at a free expression conference in Baku. Many government officials were invited to the forum; none of them attended. Rafiq was there, smiling again and hoping for change. He said that international support calling for the release of journalists was crucial, but agreed with another journalist who pointed out that Azerbaijan’s poor record on freedom of expression was a problem Azerbaijanis would have to solve, for the most part, on their own.
Six weeks later, Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade, who had been arrested for criticising the government, were released just days after the country’s parliamentary elections. In June this year, investigative journalist Eynulla Fatullayev was released too. But more than six years on from the murder of Elmar Huseynov, no one has even been investigated for his death. And now Rafiq Tagi, who asked difficult questions about his country’s future, is no longer here to help his colleagues bring freedom of expression to Azerbaijan.
This weekend’s stabbing of Rafiq Tagi is a stark reminder of just how risky it can be to write about politics or religion in Azerbaijan. Emin Milli, who was jailed after criticising the government, describes the dangers of speaking out
The European Court of Human Rights will this month examine complaints against Azerbaijan filed by bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade. The pair claim that their detention from July 2009 to November 2010 and subsequent conviction violated articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The complaint filed by Milli and Hajizade says that Article 6, on the right to a fair trial, was violated because they were allowed only belated access to their lawyers and because they court took no account of what their lawyers said.
Article 8 on respect for private and family life was violated, according to the complaint, because the two bloggers were denied family visits while held and certain family members were not allowed to testify at the trial.
Article 10 protects the right to freedom of expression, including the “freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”
The two prominent youth activists were arrested in July 2009 on charges of “hooliganism” and “inflicting minor bodily harm”, after a fight in a restaurant in downtown Baku. Reports and eyewitness accounts have said the pair were talking among a group of other civil society figures when they were severely beaten by two sportsmen, who it has been alleged were government-orchestrated provocateurs. After Milli and Hajizade filed a complaint with police, they were arrested, although their assailants were let go, raising suspicions that the duo’s attack and arrest were linked to their activism.
In November of the same year, having both been held in prison for over four months, the pair were sentenced. Hajizade received a two-year sentence and Milli two-and-a-half years. They were released a year later, although their convictions have not been overturned. The Presidency of the European Union, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and various rights groups all condemned the verdict.
Both bloggers had been prolific in using social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to mobilise Azerbaijani youth mobilise opposition against the government, speaking out against high-level corruption, misuse of oil revenues and censorship.
Prior to their arrest, the pair had earned their title “Donkey Bloggers” by posting a video satirising the country’s government for having spent a large amount of state money importing two donkeys from Germany. Rights groups had suspected the video was a key trigger in the bloggers’ arrest.
Last year Index on Censorship together with ARTICLE 19, Media Diversity Institute, and Open Society Foundations, produced a report on free expression in Azerbajan: Free Expression Under Attack
