My personal blog, my thoughts.
BAKU, Azerbaijan (A.W.)—Armenian authorities have harshly criticized Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s address to the sixth congress of his New Azerbaijan (Yeni Azerbayacan) party on Thursday, calling his remarks racist.
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”
January
On 9 January, officers from police station No 22 of the Nasimi district police department detained videoblogger Mehman Huseynov. On 10 January, he was brought before court and fined 200 manats after being found guilty of disobeying police.
He told reporters he was tortured while in custody.
M. Musayev, the chief of the Nasimi district police department, said that this statement by Huseynov libeled the police, and filed a special lawsuit. Following the lawsuit, the Surakhani district court sentenced Mehman Huseynov to two years in prison on 3 March.
On 14 December, the trial of journalist Afgan Mukhtarli continued at the Balakan District Court. In May this year, Mukhtarli had mysteriously disappeared from Georgia, where he was living, and later resurfaced in Baku – under arrest. The journalist says he was abducted, tortured, and forcefully brought to Azerbaijan, with 10,000 Euro planted in his pockets.
Read more “Afgan Mukhtarli: I was arrested on orders from Ilham Aliyev”
A former policeman in Malta claims that he was fired from his job for investigating large payments made by powerful Azerbaijanis to prominent Maltese politicians.
Speaking to Tom Kingston of the Times of London, former investigator Jonathan Ferris says that he uncovered millions of euros in bribes funneled from Azerbaijan to Malta in return for kickbacks on gas deals. According to Ferris, this investigation of high-level corruption led to his termination from the financial crimes unit of the Maltese police.
Hasrat Rustamov, a physician and the first deputy chair of the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, has filed a lawsuit to get his job back. He was fired on 6 October because, he says, he had attended rallies held by the National Council of Democratic Forces.
Read more “Opposition rally attendees fired from their jobs”
A French court has rejected a lawsuit by Azerbaijan’s government against two French journalists it accuses of defamation in a case described by the defendants and media freedom activists as an attempt by the South Caucasus nation’s authorities to export censorship beyond the country’s borders.
Read more “French Court Rejects Case Of Journalists Accused Of Calling Azerbaijan ‘Dictatorship’”