My personal blog, my thoughts.
I present to your attention the article by Sergei Markedonov, an associate professor of the Chair of Foreign Region Studies and Foreign Policy of the Russian State Humanitarian University.
The Sumgait tragedy, which occurred 30 years ago, became one of the bloodiest events in the history of the Armenian-Azerbaijani confrontation. It made the “divorce” of the two peoples uncontested.
Read more “30th anniversary of Sumgait pogroms: black spots of Azerbaijan”
A prominent lawyer spoke openly about the beating of his client while in custody, perhaps thinking that it could stir change in Azerbaijan.
Action was taken in the authoritarian country, but not against the police suspected of carrying out the beating. Instead, it is the whistle-blowing lawyer who finds himself being punished.
Shortly after speaking out, Yalcin Imanov, who has defended a number of government critics, was suspended by the Azerbaijani Bar Association. He awaits a final decision this month on whether he will be formally disbarred.
Read more “Risky Business: Defending Azerbaijan’s Opposition”
The head of Azerbaijan’s opposition National Council of Democratic Forces says the coalition will boycott an early presidential election that has been scheduled for April 11 under a decree by President Ilham Aliyev.
Opposition leader Camil Hasanli announced the coalition’s boycott plans in an interview with Reuters on February 6, a day after Aliyev’s website published the decree bringing forward the date of the election.
The vote previously had been scheduled for October 17.
Read more “Azerbaijani Opposition Coalition To Boycott Early Presidential Election”
2018 is an election year in Azerbaijan. The authorities may have the streets on lockdown, but the fight against dissent in cyberspace is just beginning.
Last week, somebody broke into MeydanTV’s Facebook. By Monday, the Berlin-based online news platform finally restored its access to the page — but had lost years of posts and nearly 100,000 subscribers (the publication had experienced a series of DDoS attacks on its site earlier in January). Anybody who knows the parlous state of freedom of speech in Azerbaijan knows of MeydanTV. The site’s independent journalism has won it no friends in the South Caucasus state, where its journalists are routinely harassed.
In late December, a group of men from a nationalist organization broke into a high school in Baku and accosted a teacher, who had become a social media sensation for posting a photo of one of his students dressed in traditional Armenian attire.
Read more “Azerbaijani Teacher Fired After Call for Peace with Armenia”
In order to achieve a breakthrough in the Karabakh settlement, several steps must be taken. This was stated by the vice-speaker of the National Assembly from the ruling Republican Party of Armenia, the RPA press secretary Eduard Sharmazanov.
Read more “Artsakh and Azerbaijan have equal rights to independence”
On 19 December, the Baku Court of Appeal upheld a ruling to block access to a number of independent news websites in Azerbaijan. The failed appeal had been brought by Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijani service, Azadlig (“Liberty”), and the unrelated Azadlig newspaper.
Read more “Azerbaijani court upholds blocking of independent news websites”
On 20 November, lawyer Yalchin Imanov’s legal practice was suspended by a decision of Azerbaijan’s Bar Association, Imanov told Meydan TV. The Bar Association took the action in response to a complaint from the Penitentiary Service against Imanov, who is known for defending political activists.
On 10 August, Azerbaijan’s Bar Association received a complaint about Yalchin Imanov from Ogtay Mammadov, deputy chairman of the Penitentiary Service. In the complaint, the Penitentiary Service accused Imanov of circulating false information in the press. Specifically, the complaint refers to allegations of torture made against the Penitentiary Service by Imanov’s client Abbas Huseynov, deputy chairman of the Muslim Unity Movement. The Penitentiary Service denies the allegations.
Read more “Bar Association suspends human rights defender’s legal practice”
The arrest of an Azerbaijani journalist in Ukraine marks a fresh instance of free-media-wary Azerbaijan having a critical reporter apprehended outside its borders.
Fikret Huseynli, who survived a beating and stabbing in his native Azerbaijan a decade ago, was arrested on October 14 at Boryspil International Airport in Kyiv as he was about to board a fight to Dusseldorf. He managed to alert his friends about his situation via Facebook before Ukrainian police took him into custody. A local court must still consider Azerbaijan’s extradition request, Ukrainian rights activists report.
Read more “Azerbaijan: Seeking to Arrest Critical Journalists throughout the Ex-USSR”
JUST PAST 7 p.m. on May 29 in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, an independent journalist, Afgan Mukhtarli, called his wife from a cafe to say he was coming home. She asked him to buy bread, according to a friend of the journalist who was at the cafe. The friend departed, but Mr. Mukhtarli never made it home. A day later, his wife discovered he was in neighboring Azerbaijan, in jail. Fearing persecution as a journalist, Mr. Mukhtarli had fled Azerbaijan two years earlier. In a brazen example of a police state reaching beyond its borders, Azerbaijan apparently dragged him back.