The Voice of Mirza Xazar

VIENNA, 22 May 2007 -- The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti, expressed concern today over the eviction of the country's two main independent newspapers from their premises, and new procedures against their imprisoned editor, Eynulla Fatullayev. On 20 May, the Ministry for Emergency Situations forcibly evacuated the staff of Realniy Azerbaijan and Gundalik Azarbaycan from their offices. The newspapers have not been printed since the eviction and it is unclear when their publication will resume. "The eviction paralyses Azerbaijan's largest and most popular newspapers, in a clear attempt to fully silence them. This is part of an ongoing campaign to do away with independent journalism," said Haraszti. He noted the evacuating authorities cited alleged danger from "structural deficiencies" in the 13-storey building, but had evicted no other tenants. "I have also received worrying news that since the eviction the
newspapers' servers and archives are being searched by national security personnel. All this represents an openly oppressive stance, going beyond the previously seen discriminatory treatment of independent media," Haraszti added. Reportedly, the search warrants were based on a new criminal case against the papers' founder and editor, Eynulla Fatullayev, already convicted last month for 'defamation of a village and of the army'. "I call on the authorities to stop persecuting the remaining free press in Azerbaijan and ensure that Realniy Azerbaijan and Gundalik Azarbaycan can resume their work," said Haraszti. Over the last months, the OSCE Representative has several times expressed his concern over the deteriorating state of freedom of the media in Azerbaijan, including during a visit to Baku where he met President Ilham Aliyev. Seven Azerbaijani journalists are presently in jail, most of them after criminal procedures for libel.

OSCE Press release

-- HREA - http://www.hrea.org Human Rights Education Associates (HREA) is an international non-governmental organisation that supports human rights learning; the training of activists and professionals; the development of educational materials and programming; and community-building through on-line technologies.

5/22/07

The number of Azerbaijani journalists in prison has reached a record high over the past month, even while one senior government official maintains that the country’s leadership is doing everything possible to respect press freedom.

Azerbaijan currently has the highest number of arrested journalists among all of the 56 member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Miklos Haraszti, the organization’s special representative for media freedoms, told Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in April. As if to underscore that status, the Paris-based media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders recently included the Azerbaijani leader on its list of so-called “Media Predators.”

Since then, the number of imprisoned journalists has risen from five to seven. Most recently, on May 16, opposition newspaper Muhalifat editor Rovshan Kebirli and correspondent Yashar Agazade were sentenced to two years and six months in prison for allegedly slandering the president’s uncle, Jalal Aliyev. The correspondent had described Jalal Aliyev as “the most corrupt person in Azerbaijan” with control of the country’s largest trading center, AMAY. Aliyev demanded evidence for the charges, which the newspaper did not provide.

International human rights and media watchdog organizations, the United States, and the European Union have repeatedly urged the Azerbaijani government to release all imprisoned journalists and to adopt legislation that would ban the criminal prosecution of media representatives.

Government officials assert that criticism of their stance on media rights is off-target. In remarks to journalists on May 3, Ali Hasanov, head of the presidential administration’s political department, asserted that “[a]fter Ilham Aliyev took office [in 2003], he solved all problems with media freedom.”

“A few facts related to some journalists cannot be equated with the situation in the country as a whole,” Hasanov added. Imprisoned journalists, however, were excluded from a May 8 parliament amnesty for prisoners granted at the suggestion of the president’s wife, parliamentarian Mehriban Aliyeva.

Reporters Without Borders appears to be in the presidential administration’s firing line. Hasanov claimed that the organization “is working under the Armenian lobby’s influence,” and has been “fighting against [Azerbaijani ally] Turkey for a long time.” Given this perceived bias, officials in Baku tend to disregard the group’s assessments.

The criticism of international organizations is unlikely to die down soon. Late on May 20, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, citing violation of fire safety standards, moved to shut down the offices of Realniy Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azerbaijan, two newspapers often critical of the Aliyev administration. The papers’ publisher and editor-in-chief, Eynulla Fatullayev, was recently sentenced to two-plus years in prison for slander. Intervention by local journalists, human rights activists and American and British diplomats stopped the closure, the pro-opposition news agency Turan reported

A rally by local journalists has been tentatively scheduled for June 14 in Baku to protest the recent imprisonments of reporters.

Perhaps the highest profile instance of press repression involves Fatullayev, who was arrested on April 20 on charges of slandering internally displaced persons from Khojali, a town in Nagorno-Karabakh. The suit was filed by Tatiana Chaladze, chairwoman of the Committee for Protection of Refugees, a Baku-based non-governmental organization. In an article entitled “Karabakh Diary,” Fatullayev published a statement by an Armenian army officer who said that Armenian forces had kept open an exit corridor for civilians during a bloodbath in 1992, remembered in Azerbaijan as the Khojali massacre. The article also reported that escapees from Khojali confirmed the existence of such a corridor. Chaladze demanded evidence that the town’s former residents had confirmed the existence of a corridor. Fatullayev was also charged for reportedly stating in an online discussion forum that chaotic Azerbaijani gunfire had killed some Khojali residents. The publisher maintains that both accusations are a political response to Realniy Azerbaijan’s sharp criticism of President Aliyev’s rule.

Helping to stir the press freedom controversy was a brutal beating of the editor of Gundelik Azerbaijan on the day of Fatullayev’s sentencing. The editor, Uzeir Jafarov, was hospitalized as a result of injuries suffered in the attack. He claims that a police officer who attended Fatullayev’s trial was among his assailants. The charge has not yet been investigated. The arrest of Sanat newspaper reporter Rafik Taghi and editor Samir Sadagtogulu focused on a similarly sensitive topic, the role of Islam. On May 4, the two received three and four-year prison sentences respectively, for the publication of a 2006 article that described Christian values as more progressive than Islamic values. Charges were brought by the general prosecutor’s office for “inflaming religious conflict.” [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Baku analysts have trouble explaining possible reasons for the government’s apparent hard line toward journalists. The country’s opposition is weak and fragmented, they note, and the presidential elections are still a year off.

The April 27 decision to grant a broadcast license to private television and radio company ANS after months of delay is cited by Azerbaijani reporters as the only recent sign of tolerance of media outlets that diverge from the government’s viewpoint. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Shahin Hajiyev, editor of the pro-opposition Turan news agency, which has had its own property dispute tussle with officials, sees the issue as part of a larger malaise concerning democratization. “It is not only a media problem, “commented Hajiyev. “It is a problem with the general situation with democracy in Azerbaijan.”

Editor’s Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance journalist based in Baku.

(www.eurasianet.org)

Flawed parliamentary elections in November 2005 capped a year of unfulfilled reform ambitions in Azerbaijan. The elections resulted in the opposition's securing only a small fraction of the 125 seats in the Milli Majlis (National Assembly), with a substantial majority going to the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party (YAP) and its allies. The run-up to the election included claims by the regime of an attempted coup, which resulted in the detention and arrest of several former ministers.

After having been controlled by the Ottoman Empire since the seventeenth century, Azerbaijan enjoyed a brief period of independence from 1918 to 1920. It entered the Soviet Union in 1922 as part of the Transcaucasian Soviet Federal Republic, becoming a separate Soviet republic in 1936. Following a referendum in 1991, Azerbaijan declared independence from the disintegrating Soviet Union.

In 1992, Abulfaz Elchibey, leader of the nationalist opposition Azerbaijan Popular Front, was elected president in a generally free and fair vote. A military coup one year later ousted him from power and installed the former first secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party, Heydar Aliyev, in his place. In the October 1993 presidential elections, Aliyev was credited with receiving nearly 99 percent of the vote. Azerbaijan's first post-Soviet parliamentary elections, held in November 1995, saw five leading opposition parties and some 600 independent candidates barred from the vote in which Aliyev's Yeni Azerbaijan Party (YAP) won the most seats. In October 1998, Aliyev was chosen president with more than 70 percent of the vote in an election marred by irregularities.

In November 2000, the ruling YAP captured the majority of seats in the parliamentary election. The Azerbaijan Popular Front and the Communist Party came in a distant second and third, respectively. International monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe cited widespread electoral fraud, including the stuffing of ballot boxes and a strong pro-gov-ernment bias in state-run media. Despite widespread criticism of the elections, the Council of Europe approved Azerbaijan's application for membership just days after the vote, a decision widely criticized by international human rights groups.

An August 2002 national referendum led to the adoption of a series of constitutional amendments, some of which critics charged would further strengthen the ruling party's grip on power. One controversial amendment stipulated that the prime minister become president if the head of state resigns or is incapacitated. Critics charged that the aging and ailing Aliyev would appoint his son, Ilham, prime minister in order to facilitate a transfer of power within the Aliyev family. Opposition groups and the OSCE charged that the referendum was marred by fraud, including ballot-box stuffing, intimidation of election monitors and officials, and inflated voter-turn-out figures of nearly 90 percent.

In the months preceding the October 2003 presidential election, the political environment was marked by uncertainty over Heydar Aliyev's declining health and its implications for his reelection bid. Aliyev collapsed during a live television broadcast in April and left Azerbaijan that summer to receive medical treatment abroad. At the same time, government officials continued to deny that his health problems were serious, and he remained the official YAP candidate for the presidential election. In June, Aliyev's son, Ilham, was officially nominated as a presidential candidate, and the elder Aliev withdrew his candidacy in favor of his son's on October 2, 2003.

In the 2003 presidential ballot, final election results released by the Central Election Commission showed Ilham Aliyev defeating seven challengers with nearly 77 percent of the vote. His closest rival, opposition Musavat Party leader Isa Gambar received only 14 percent of the vote, while six other candidates received less than 4 percent each. According to OSCE observers, the election was marred by widespread fraud. During violent clashes between security forces and demonstrators in Baku in October, in which at least one person was reportedly killed and several hundred were injured, the authorities unleashed a crackdown against the opposition in which more than 600 people were detained. Among those arrested were opposition party leaders and supporters who had not been directly involved in the preceding days' violence, along with many election officials who refused to certify fraudulent election results. Heydar Aliyev, who had long dominated the country's political life, died in December 2003.

Over the course of 2004 and 2005, Ilham Aliyev sought to consolidate his position among the country's ruling elite. In the immediate run-up to the November 2005 parliamentary election, a number of former and current senior officials were detained in response to what the regime claimed was a coup attempt. However, observers maintained that the detentions were a move on the president's part to further consolidate control over the country's political elites.

Less than half of all registered voters cast ballots in the legislative poll, the lowest voter turnout in a decade. More than 2,000 candidates registered for the 125 constituencies. However, about a fourth of these candidates ultimately withdrew, in some cases because of intimidation, leaving 1,550 to take part on election day. The elections resulted in the opposition's capturing 10 of 125 seats in the Milli Majlis (National Assembly), with a substantial majority going to the ruling YAP and its allies. Seats in four districts were invalidated by the authorities and were scheduled to be rerun after the end date of the coverage period of this report. The results of the elections were contested by the opposition, which organized a number of rallies in the country's capital.

A settlement for the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, over which Armenia and Azerbaijan fought in the early 1990s, was not achieved, although high-level talks provided a glimmer of hope that a process could be in the works to ameliorate the tense state of affairs. The region, which is formally part of Azerbaijan, is now predominantly ethnically Armenian and effectively under Armenian control.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Citizens of Azerbaijan cannot change their government democratically. The country's constitution provides for a strong presidency and the country's parliament, the 125 member Milli Majlis, exercises little independence from the executive branch. Presidential and parliamentary terms are five years.

The 1993, 1998, and 2003 presidential and 1995 and 2000 parliamentary elections were considered neither free nor fair by international observers. The 2005 parliamentary elections were likewise afflicted by extensive irregularities. The OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights cited among the elections' shortcomings "interference of local authorities, disproportionate use of force to thwart rallies, arbitrary detentions, restrictive interpretations of campaign provisions and an unbalanced composition of election commissions." President Ilham Aliev issued two decrees, in May and October 2005, directing the administration of free and fair elections; these decrees effectively went unheeded.

Corruption is deeply entrenched throughout society, with government officials rarely held accountable for engaging in corrupt practices. The lack of judicial and parliamentary independence from the executive, among other institutional obstacles, creates an environment that enables corruption. Azerbaijan was ranked 137 out of 159 countries surveyed in Transparency International's 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index.

While Azerbaijan's constitution guarantees freedom of speech and the press, the authorities use a variety of tools to intimidate the press. Journalists are subject to physical harassment and even risk death. In March 2005, Elmar Huseinov, editor of the opposition magazine Monitor, was shot to death in the lobby of his apartment building in Baku. The broadcast media are the main source of information in the country. Of the 16 television stations, 4 broadcast to a national audience; all 4 of these have clear or likely links to the regime. Independent and opposition papers struggle financially in the face of low circulation, limited advertising revenues, and heavy fines or imprisonment of their staff. State businesses rarely if ever advertise in opposition newspapers. While there is some pluralism in the print media, it is irrelevant to the extent that newspapers have relatively low print runs, are not distributed regularly in rural areas, and are frequently too expensive for many people to purchase on a regular basis.

A noteworthy development in 2005 was the unveiling of Azerbaijan's first public service broadcasting channel, which began operations in August. Following the flawed presidential election in 2003, the Council of Europe, of which Azerbaijan is a member, adopted a resolution demanding that the government of Azerbaijan immediately implement a series of measures that included the creation of public service television to allow political parties to better communicate with the country's citizens. The Council of Europe for months exhorted the authorities in Baku to establish a genuinely independent public broadcasting channel, but the regime was slow in implementing the directive. The channel's creation just weeks in advance of the November 2005 election minimized its impact on the election process. The opposition was afforded some television airtime during the election campaign, but overall news coverage was slanted toward the ruling YAP and its candidates.

The government restricts some religious activities of members of "nontraditional" minority religious groups through burdensome registration requirements and interference in the importation and distribution of printed religious materials. Islam, Russian Orthodoxy, and Judaism are considered traditional religions, and their members can generally worship freely.

The government generally does not restrict academic freedom. However, some faculty and students have experienced political pressure. After the October 2003 election and in advance of the 2005 parliamentary poll, some professors and teachers said they were dismissed because of their membership in opposition parties.

The government often restricts freedom of assembly, especially for political parties critical of the government. Registration with the Ministry of Justice is required for a nongovernmental organization (NGO) to function as a legal entity, and the registration process has been described as cumbersome and nontransparent. A week before the 2005 parliamentary elections, Azerbaijan lifted a ban on NGOs receiving more than 30 percent of their funding from foreign sources to serve as election monitors. Although the law permits the formation of trade unions and the right to strike, the majority of trade unions remain closely affiliated with the government and most major industries are state owned.

The judiciary is corrupt, inefficient, and subservient to the executive branch. Arbitrary arrest and detention are common, particularly for members of the political opposition. Detainees are often held for long periods before trial, and their access to lawyers is restricted. Police abuse of suspects during arrest and interrogation reportedly remains commonplace, with torture sometimes used to extract confessions. Prison conditions are reportedly severe, with many inmates suffering from overcrowding and inadequate medical care.

Some members of ethnic minority groups, including the small Armenian population, have complained of discrimination in areas including education, employment, and housing. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azeris who fled the war in Nagorno-Karabakh have been prevented by the Armenian government from returning to their homes and remain in Azerbaijan, often living in dreadful conditions.

Significant parts of the economy are in the hands of a corrupt elite, which severely limits equality of opportunity. Supporters of the political opposition face job discrimination, demotion, or dismissal.

Traditional societal norms and poor economic conditions restrict women's professional roles. Domestic violence is a problem, and there are no laws regarding spousal abuse. In 2004, Azerbaijan adopted a new national program to combat human trafficking. According to the U.S. State Department's annual 2005 report on human trafficking, Azerbaijan is both a country of origin and a transit point for the trafficking of women for prostitution.

(www.freedomhouse.org)