As the Eurovision Song Contest fades from memory, Azerbaijan has stepped up its attacks on journalists. Blogger Emil Baghirov reports on the dire state of press freedom in the Caucasus nation
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The lawyer for the editor-in-chief of an Azerbaijani news website has claimed his client was tortured following his arrest.
Nijat Aliyev from Islamic news website Azadexber was arrested on 20 May for narcotics charges and put in two months of pre-trial detention. According to Azerbaijan-based organisation Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), the editor’s lawyer Anar Gasimli has said that Aliyev has been blackmailed while in custody.
Police allegedly condemned the editor for his frequent articles about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, after Nijat admitted to disseminating anti-LGBT material ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest last week.
Gasimli said: “Nijat claims that he was questioned by police. Nijat did not co-operate at which point the police beat him with their fists and, at one point, a chair. The police told him that, as he had written anti-LGBT material, they would put two homosexual men in his cell and then he will become gay too.”
Police also allegedly threatened that if he did not admit to the drug related charges, he would be sentenced to more than five years in prison under more serious charges. According to Gasimli, they also threatened to plant drugs at his apartment, endangering his family, though Gasimli said legal measures had been taken to prevent this.
Emin Huseynov from IRFS said: “We cannot comment on the material that Nijat was said to have distributed, but Nijat Aliyev did not kill anyone, he merely published material and we support the right of people’s freedom of expression.”
This is not the first time a journalist has faced random drug charges. Eynulla Fatullayev, who worked as a reporter on Elmar Huseynov’s magazine Monitor in Azerbaijan and later founded and edited Realny Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azerbaycan, served almost four years in prison for defamation. The conviction in 2007 followed years of harassment and intimidation by the Azerbaijani authorities, including being charged with drug possession in July 2010. Fatullayev was eventually pardoned in 26 May 2011.
Huseynov added: “Certainly the trumped up drugs allegations are nothing new. It started in 2006, with Mirza Sakit, then again with Eynulla Fatullayev and there are numerous other cases. The police regularly accuse activists of drug use yet do not provide any DNA evidence to back up their claims, nor do they admit doctors into prisons.”
Local blogger Haji Hajiyev suggested that the arrest was an attempt to reassure the West that they are tackling Islamic extremism. He said: “It is interesting that they choose to focus on this particular issue at a time when the international community is voicing concerns about human rights and democracy in Azerbaijan.”
Aliyev is currently being held at Kurdakhani investigative prison, but it is believed the torture came from officers of Yasamal District Police Office whilst he was being held in custody. Gasimli says the editor had been tortured in such a way “that no mark of torture was left on his body”.
Gaimili added: “My client could be imprisoned for up to three years. This is against his right to freedom to expression and if unsuccessful, we will take this case to the European Court of Human Rights.”
Alice Purkiss is an editorial assistant at Index. She tweets at @alicemaypurkiss
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.