{"id":17930,"date":"2010-11-18T09:32:11","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T09:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=17930"},"modified":"2016-11-14T14:22:33","modified_gmt":"2016-11-14T14:22:33","slug":"azerbaijan-court-frees-donkey-blogger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=17930","title":{"rendered":"Azerbaijan: Court frees &#8220;donkey blogger&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning Baku&#8217;s Appeal Court ordered the release of blogger Adnan Hajizade, he had served half of his two-year sentence on controversial charges of hooliganism. His co-defendent,\u00a0 blogger, <a title=\"NYT: In Azerbaijan, a Donkey Suit Provokes Laughs and, Possibly, Arrests\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/15\/world\/asia\/15azerbaijan.html\">Emin Abdullayev \u2013 known as Milli<\/a>, remains in prison serving a two and a half year term.<\/p>\n<p>The case of the two young Azeri bloggers sparked an international outcry. The men had been actively using social media to mobilise opposition against the government, speaking out on a variety of issues, including government corruption, misuse of oil revenues, censorship and education.<\/p>\n<p>Several weeks prior to their arrest, the pair posted a video on YouTube mocking the government\u2019s decision to spend a vast amount of money on importing two donkeys from Germany. Locals believe the tongue-in-cheek video angered the regime and was the real reason for their arrest.<\/p>\n<p>The Secretary General of the Council of Europe voiced concerns about the sentences and the &#8220;inevitable chilling effect on freedom of expression in Azerbaijan&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Index on Censorship: Donkey Bloggers punished\" href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/2009\/11\/azerbaijan-donkey-bloggers-punished\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><em>Read more here: Donkey bloggers punished<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning Baku&#8217;s Appeal Court ordered the release of blogger Adnan Hajizade, he had served half of his two-year sentence on controversial charges of hooliganism. His co-defendent,\u00a0 blogger, Emin Abdullayev \u2013 known as Milli, remains in prison serving a two and a half year term. The case of the two young Azeri bloggers sparked an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[8867,584,585],"tags":[1774,115,1509,727],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17930"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81740,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17930\/revisions\/81740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}