The skyline in Baku. Tycoons like the Rothschilds or the Nobels made their fortune here over a hundred years ago thanks to oil. (Image: S.K.LO.)
By Karlos Zurutuza
ROME, Oct 10 2024 – On November 20, 2023, Ulvi Hasanli, director of AbzasMedia —an independent media outlet in Azerbaijan—, was arrested when he was about to board a taxi to Baku airport. Meanwhile, uniformed officers raided AbzasMedia’s headquarters in the Azerbaijani capital, claiming to have found 40,000 euros in cash, which was used as evidence to accuse Hasanli of currency smuggling.
“I guess we were focusing on topics too sensitive for the government,” explains Leyla Mustafayeva via videoconference from Berlin to IPS. She has been the new editor-in-chief of AbzasMedia since February.
This 41-year-old Azerbaijani journalist recalls that one of those “too sensitive” topics had to do with Nagorno-Karabakh, the enclave in Azerbaijani territory from which the Armenian minority was expelled in September 2023.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference 2024 (COP29) will take place from November 11 to 22 in Baku. “Baku seeks to silence any dissenting voice in what was supposed to be a great year for Azerbaijan,” concludes Mustafayeva
“We investigated the contracts awarded for reconstruction in the area and discovered that many companies belonged to high-ranking government officials,” explains the journalist. The second issue dealt with an artificial lake where toxic waste from a gold mine was being dumped.
In addition to covering protests that were brutally suppressed, the journalists wanted to go further.
“The locals are suffering from serious health problems. We wanted to take samples to check cyanide levels in the soil and water but the village was under police control,” recalls Mustafayeva, who has been exiled since 2017.
It was that year when her husband, Afqan Mukhtarli, an Azerbaijani journalist and human rights defender, was arrested in Georgia and transferred to Azerbaijan in a joint operation between Tbilisi and Baku.
Today, six journalists from AbzasMedia are listed among 23 journalists currently in prison in Azerbaijan. The country ranks 164th out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index published annually by Reporters Without Borders.
Observers agree that repression has escalated since 2023. The United Nations Climate Change Conference 2024 (COP29) will take place from November 11 to 22 in Baku.
“Baku seeks to silence any dissenting voice in what was supposed to be a great year for Azerbaijan,” concludes Mustafayeva.
Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, waves from one of the thousands of billboards scattered throughout the country. He came to power in 2003, succeeding his father in office. Credit: David Fielke/IPS
“Repressive State”
The current president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, took office in 2003, succeeding his father in power in a country rich in gas and oil. The latter is a factor that strengthens the regime’s stability and also opens many doors in the international arena.
But its reputation seems inversely proportional to its wealth.
The American NGO Freedom House labels Azerbaijan as “one of the least free places in the world.” It also ranks 154th out of 180 countries in the 2023 Corruption Perception Index compiled by Transparency International, a platform working in 100 countries.
On September 24, Human Rights Watch reminded that this is “the third consecutive year the COP is held in a repressive state that severely limits freedom of expression and peaceful assembly” (the previous ones were Dubai and Egypt).
Baku´s Olympic stadium will host one of the annual climate summits, COP29, from November 11 to 22, in Azerbaijan’s capital. The country’s president, Ilham Aliyev, is using this conference in an attempt to improve his regime’s image. (PEN/Flickr)
“You could say that the West has failed Azerbaijani civil society. It’s clear that the priority is energy, not human rights,” Arzu Geybulla, an independent Azerbaijani journalist, told IPS via videoconference from Istanbul.
She hasn’t set foot in her country since she was accused of “treason” in 2014 for having worked for Agos, an Istanbul-based Armenian newspaper. She says that the Armenian issue and anything related to the Azerbaijani family in power for the past three decades are two red lines for journalists and activists.
“Repression has worsened in recent years. Journalists on the ground are completely defenceless against all kinds of threats, mainly because they lack legal protection,” Geybulla denounces.
She refers to measures like the so-called “Media Law”, passed in 2022. The Committee to Protect Journalists denounced that the decree increased government control over the press, making it easier to ban and shut down media outlets.
UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband (left), welcomes Mukhtar Babayev, the president-designate of COP29, in London last July. Once again, energy takes precedence over human rights. (Image: UK Government)
However, journalists aren’t the only ones being targeted.
One of the most well-known recent cases is that of Gubad Ibadoghlu, a professor at the London School of Economics and a renowned human rights defender in Azerbaijan. He also worked on the United Nations Convention against Corruption.
On July 23, 2023, Ibadoghlu was travelling with his wife when their car was pushed into a ditch by three other vehicles. The couple was brutally beaten by agents in plainclothes and later taken to police custody in Baku.
After spending the first six months in a small cell shared with five other inmates and being deprived of his medications (he is diabetic), Ibadoghlu remains under house arrest awaiting trial on charges of “smuggling foreign currency” and “propagation of extremist ideas.” He is not allowed to use a phone, and his visits are restricted.
“It was a message to everyone: if they can arrest someone like him, they can arrest anyone,” explains his daughter Zhala Bayramova, a human rights lawyer, speaking to IPS by phone from the Swedish city of Lund.
The police also claimed to have found 40,000 euros in a wardrobe in his office, despite the presence of a safe. Other than the recurring sum, the 26-year-old lawyer points to a pattern in repression campaigns.
“In 2003, they targeted the political opposition; in 2013, NGOs; and now it’s journalists, researchers, and academics,” the Azerbaijani woman emphasizes.
“There have always been political prisoners in Azerbaijan,” she adds.
An oil platform in the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan’s fossil resources have opened many doors for it on the international stage. (Image: S.K.LO.)
Silence
Journalists in Azerbaijan contacted by IPS pointed to increasingly difficult working conditions.
“Taking just one photo on the street can land you in jail. There are police officers everywhere; it’s like a massive open-air prison,” a journalist told IPS by phone before asking not to reveal his identity for fear of reprisals.
The Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Justice, the Press Department and the Baku Police refused to answer the questions forwarded by IPS via email.
Meanwhile, arrests continue. On August 21, Bahruz Samadov, an Azerbaijani political analyst pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Prague, was arrested.
After the police searched his apartment on suspicion of drug trafficking and allegedly found 40,000 euros in cash, Samadov was eventually charged with “treason.”
A few days later, another Azerbaijani researcher, Cavid Aga, was detained at the airport and interrogated by intelligence services about Samadov. He was about to fly to Lithuania to continue his studies but is now banned from leaving the country. Dozens of journalists and activists today face this same ban.
Aga, 31, built a reputation as an observer, translating news and official statements, and providing context during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Baku then took control of two-thirds of the territory held by Armenians after a 44-day confrontation.
“Although there’s a new generation in power, Azerbaijan is still doing what it has always done,” Aga tells IPS via videoconference from Baku.
Aga ignores when the ban on leaving the country will be lifted and is involved in a legal process to clarify his situation. He admits being much more cautious in his statements “for obvious reasons.” The government, he stresses, “has managed to make people afraid to speak.”