![]() ![]() On Tuesday, February 8, President Ilham Aliyev enacted the law “On Media,” which replaces existing laws governing media outlets, according to news reports and a copy of the law, which CPJ reviewed. “Even though it’s been 14 years since he was murdered, I tried to show to the government nothing will be forgotten,” he says.Stockholm, Febru– Azerbaijan authorities should repeal a newly enacted media law that increases state control of the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday. An icon of freedom of expression, Elmar had inspired both Emin and Mehman’s careers. He also recorded a tribute at the grave of Elmar Huseynov - an outspoken journalist critical of the Aliyev regime, who was gunned down in 2005. On March 2, the morning of his release, Mehman visited the cemetery where his mother is buried. #MEKHMAN KARIMOV ATTORNEY FREE#“He was murdered and it’s clear to us the investigation was not free and fair,” Emin tells TIME from Geneva. Two months later, Rasim Aliyev died after being beaten in what authorities claimed was an altercation over soccer. Emin spent 10 months living in Baku’s Swiss Embassy before he flew out with a Swiss government delegation who were attending the opening ceremony of the first European Games. A police beating in 2008 had left him with brain injuries, according to a case filed against Azerbaijan at the European Court of Human Rights, and when the government launched another crackdown on dissidents in 2014 he went into hiding, aided by his friend and fellow IRFS journalist Rasim Aliyev. “The ill-gotten wealth of the ruling family and oligarchs grew and criticism or truth-telling around it was deemed “criminal.””Īmong those facing repercussions was Emin, founder of a free speech advocacy group called Institute for Reporters Freedom and Safety (IRFS). “That led to the freezing of institutional and then personal bank accounts of NGOs and media groups,” she says. Altstadt, who has written several books on Azerbaijan, says the repression worsened after 2010, when the ruling party gained absolute control of the legislature and passed laws that provided a pretext for “tax evasion” charges to be brought against organizations that received foreign grants. Persecution of dissident voices has long been a feature of the Aliyev regime. In December, a British tribunal heard that in 2015, Ilham Aliyev’s daughters attempted to buy a $80 million London property that would have carried “a significant risk of money laundering.” embassy in Azerbaijan compared father and son to members of The Godfather’s fictional Corleone family. In a cable released by Wikileaks, a former diplomat at the U.S. (State police said 2,800 people attended the rally, while the opposition said there were 20,000.)Įmin Huseynov began his journalism career in 2001, two years before Ilham Aliyev took over as President, following on from his father Heydar, who had first ruled Azerbaijan as its Soviet boss, and then as the Republic’s president from 1994. Mehman had also inspired thousands of protesters to take the streets in what opposition figures called Azerbaijan’s largest demonstrations in more than a decade. He broke his fast late January, when Azerbaijan’s prosecutor canceled the new charges in a rare concession to international pressure. In response, he went on hunger strike: he was “nil by mouth” for four days before accepting water and eventually liquid yoghurt. 26, a few months before Mehman’s scheduled release date, authorities bought new charges against him that his lawyer said could have extended his jail term up to seven years. The persecution of the Huseynov brothers, Vincent says, is characteristic of the “very personal” way Aliyev targets his critics. RSF says at least four journalists have been killed with impunity since 2005 in the former Soviet republic, which ranks 163 out of 180 countries on its 2018 press freedom index. bureau director Rebecca Vincent calls a “perpetually worsening crackdown” in Azerbaijan. A case in point is what Reporters Without Borders (RSF) U.K. ![]() The murder of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi has drawn significant attention to how authoritarian regimes’ repress critical media. ![]()
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