He even announced that many of them are Islamists who want to make Azerbaijan a country like Iran.
“When arrested, they all begin to make noise that journalists are arrested, when you ask them whether you know them, no one knows the kind of journalist, but it turns out that it was a “known person”. Can you name these 16-17 people and say who they are and what they are?” so opposed Chairman of Central Asia and South Caucasus Network of Freedom of Expression Azer Hasrat to Director of Azerbaijan “Turan” agency, Mehman Aliyev, yesterday, at the 11th South Caucasus Media conference held in Tbilisi organized by the OSCE Representative for Freedom of Media issues.
Note that earlier Director of “Turan” was talking about repression against journalists in his country, and informed that 11 journalists and 6 bloggers are currently in jail in Azerbaijan. In response to Azer Hasrat, Director of “Turan” spoke on general situation of journalists in Azerbaijan that they are apprehended inculpating “hooliganism” or “drug trade” as a pretense, allegedly this imprisonment has nothing to do with journalism. “Why is it so that hooligans are never apprehended, but when a journalist or an NGO member has done something by chance, he is immediately apprehended for hooliganism? It clearly shows that there is a state policy.” To eliminate the doubts, he suggested for the media organizations to be able to attend the decision-making examinations on imprisonment of journalists.
In response to these words, Azer Hasrat made the following assertion, “Do you know that one of those imprisoned journalist, recently, made a statement, which said, please, only do not consider me a political prisoner, I am here for my deeds.” Later on, he also made the following statement, “I asked such a special provocative question to Mr. Aliyev, because as for these journalists in inverted commas, when they are arrested, a noise is raised, but it turns out that no one knows them, and later, we find out that most of them are working for the Islamic regime, they are Islamists and are willing to have an Islamic revolution in Azerbaijan so that our country becomes a country like Iran. We cannot call these people bloggers, journalists and public figures. Now, everyone can use the Internet. So what? Is he who has access to the Internet a journalist and a blogger?”
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All of this, as well as the words said earlier by one of Azerbaijan President’s Administration officials that the convicted are mainly hooligans and drug traffickers, eventually forced the OSCE Media Representative Dunja Mijatović again to come up with a speech criticizing the occurrences against freedom of expression in Azerbaijan. Note that she has opened the conference with a similar speech. And the second time, she just said that she is well aware of how the deeds are “made” in Azerbaijan and people are detained as drug dealers and hooligans, and Azerbaijan needs to independently solve its domestic problems rather than casting those raising them to prisons, and wrapped up with a rhetorical question, “Where is Arzu? Where is Khadija? Where is Mehman (Azeri famous journalists who for various obstacles could not attend this conference – M. B.). Are they criminals? I do not think so.”
M. BARSEGHYAN
Tbilisi
