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Azerbaijan’s government locks up its online critics on trumped-up charges. It’s an odd choice to host a giant international forum on internet freedom and Rebecca Vincent asks international visitors to look below the country’s modern veneer

Azerbaijan has a shocking record on free expression. Nine journalists and three human rights defenders are currently in jail — five of these cases are linked to online criticism of authorities. Others have been subject to sustained harassment, including one prominent female journalist who has been the victim of a vicious blackmail attempt.

Yet from 6 to 9 November, more than 1000  representatives of governments, civil society groups, industry and private corporations will descend on the country’s capital, Baku, for the seventh annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a multi-stakeholder talking-shop established by the United Nations in 2006. Participants’ discussions of internet governance will include human rights and freedom of expression.

Any Azerbaijani who dares to exercise their right to free expression in Azerbaijan is taking a big risk. Overstepping the mark on certain taboo subjects online — in particular official corruption and mendacity — has serious repercussions. There has been a string of high-profile cases of punitive action against online government critics.

Earlier this year, Khadija Ismayilova, a journalist with the Azerbaijani arm of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and an avid social networker, was the victim of a crude blackmail attempt. She received an envelope containing pictures of a personal nature and a note saying: “Whore, behave, or you will be defamed.” She refused to be silenced — and a week later a film of her having sex taken by a hidden spy camera was posted online. It transpired, after an investigation conducted  by her lawyer and other journalists, that illegal monitoring of her activities began days after she published an story about Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s family’s businesses.

The regime has also used trumped-up charges to persecute critics. The editor of the website azadxeber.org, Nijat Aliyev, has been in detention since his arrest in May on drugs-related charges, and faces up to three years’ imprisonment. He has no previous convictions for drug use and is not known to friends as a drug-user. Before his arrest he had attacked government policies on religion and LGBT rights and criticised the cost of hosting the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku this year.

Khayal TV executive director, Vugar Gonagov, and editor-in-chief, Zaur Guliyev, are also in detention. Their crime?  They are accused of uploading a YouTube video showing a regional mayor making derogatory comments about local residents. The video sparked protests and led to the mayor’s dismissal. The pair face up to 10 years’ in jail if convicted on charges of organising mass disorder and abuse of office.

Human rights defender Taleh Khasmammadov is serving a four-year prison sentence on hooliganism charges. He was arrested in November 2011 after he posted a series of videos on YouTube containing interviews with victims of crimes committed by a gang in the region, which the victims alleged had connections to local police officers.

Freelance journalist Faramaz Novruzoglu is serving a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence on charges of appealing for mass disorder and crossing the border without proper documentation. Before his arrest, Novruzoglu was outspoken on social networking sites, criticising the authorities and calling for protests.

Searching for Freedom: Online Expression in Azerbaijan, a new report by Azerbaijani free expression groups, concludes that internet freedom is seriously constrained in Azerbaijan — a view shared by US human rights group Freedom House in its Freedom on the Net 2012 report.

Although there are instances of content blocking and data filtering by the state, from a technical standpoint the internet remains largely a free space in Azerbaijan — and in legal terms there are no restrictions applied to online media.

But there are widespread fears that the authorities will impose registration and licensing requirements on online media outlets in the future. Azerbaijan’s Law on Mass Media includes the internet as a form of mass media, meaning requirements applied to other media could be extended to the internet.

Internet regulation is the responsibility not of a politically independent body but of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies. And its “Rules for Using Internet Services” contain provisions for an internet kill-switch plan, which contradict international freedom of expression standards.

Cyber-attacks present a further obstacle to internet freedom, notably mutual denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks between groups of hackers in Azerbaijan and Armenia, and in Azerbaijan and Iran. There have been some reports of the use of DDoS attacks by the state: several attacks against the website of the opposition newspaper Azadliq originated from an IP address registered to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies.

Six months after Eurovision, the IGF will give Azerbaijan another chance to present itself as a modern, outward-looking nation to the rest of the world. But there is more to this story, and delegates should not be fooled.

Rebecca Vincent is a freelance human rights consultant and expert on freedom of expression in Azerbaijan

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In March, The International Partnership Group for Azerbaijan, of which Index is a member, published a report on freedom of expression in Azerbaijan. Read it here.

You can find more about the human rights situation on Index’s Azerbaijan: Access Denied page

The post Internet freedom? Not in Azerbaijan appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova was among journalists and free expression advocates at the Frontline Club yesterday discussing the deteriorating situation for freedom of expression and human rights in Azerbaijan in the run up the Eurovision Song Contest — and to highlight the importance of keeping up pressure on the government after one of the biggest pop events of the year has passed.

The press event, which highlighted violence against critical voices and the government’s aggressive progamme of urban redevelopment, coincided with the publication of the International Partnership Group for Azerbaijan‘s (IPGA)’s report Running Scared: Azerbaijan’s Silenced Voices, a joint report by Index on Censorship, ARTICLE 19, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and other campaigning and press freedom organisations.

Ismayilova, who spoke about the recent blackmailing campaign against her, widely accepted to be retaliation for her investigative journalism into corruption, was one of the panellists. On 7 March, Ismayilova was threatened in the most conventional of ways — she received a collection of intimate photographs through the post, with a note warning her to “behave” or she would be “defamed”. But authorities seriously miscalculated both her response and those of her family members.

They assumed, said Ismayilova, that, like some other journalists who have suffered similar blackmail campaigns,  she would bow to pressure and temper her reports. But Ismayilova went public with her story.  Days later, on 14 March 2012, an intimate video of Ismayilova filmed by a hidden camera was posted to the internet.

Exposing Ismayilova in this way was particularly vicious, as honour killings still take place in Azerbaijan and the authorities would have been well aware that Ismayilova’s life could potentially be in serious danger. Ismayilova demanded an immediate investigation.

In They Took Everything From Me, Human Rights Watch documents how residents have been forcibly evicted without reasonable notice and chronicles the demolition of homes. Senior Researcher for the organisation’s Europe and Central Asia Division Giorgi Gogai said the government had denied any residential properties had been destroyed to make way for Eurovision-related building work.

Media expert Vugar Gojayev spoke about the ways in which political life has shrunk in Azerbaijan, made worse by last year’s closure of the Human Rights House in Baku – the centre had been an important place for writers and civil society activists to meet. Outside the capital, things are worse. There are no opposition newspapers or opposition parties and most public gatherings are banned.

Azerbaijan works hard to present itself as a modern, democratic country with excellent business opportunities for multinational corporations. But recent attacks against journalists and activists reveal a government unwilling to hear the voices of its people: there are approximately 60 political prisoners in the country at the moment.

The IPGA’s report also examines the significant gap between the image the government is trying to promote and the situation on the ground and Index’s Head of Advocacy Mike Harris examines how the Azerbaijani government strives to influence opinion not only among the international business community but also, crucially, at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the political branch of the Council of Europe.

On Wednesday, Index’s Freedom of Expression Awards celebrates journalists, activists, innovators and artists working on the frontline for free speech.

Azerbaijani journalist Idrak Abbasov, who has reported on the activities of an Azerbaijani oil company and whose home was targeted in retaliation, is on the shortlist for the journalism awards.

Click here to download the report and to read more about the free expression crisis in Azerbaijan

The post Azerbaijan’s silenced voices appeared first on Index on Censorship.

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