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AZERBAIJAN

Azerbaijani rights activist hides in Swiss embassy

A prominent Azerbaijani rights activist, who is wanted by the tightly-controlled Caucasus country's authorities and risks imminent arrest, is hiding in the Swiss embassy in Baku, officials confirmed on Friday.

Published: 13 February 2015 10:57 CET
Azerbaijani rights activist hides in Swiss embassy
Swiss embassy in the "Old Town" of Baku. Photo: FDFA

The activist, Emin Huseynov, has been sought by prosecutors on charges of "illegal entrepreneurship and tax evasion since last August," Azerbaijan's foreign ministry spokesman Hikmet Haciyev told AFP.
   
"A court ordered Huseynov's arrest, but he fled and is currently hiding at the Swiss embassy in Baku," he said.
   
The Swiss Federal Department for Foreign Affairs (FDFA) confirmed that "there is currently an Azerbaijani national at the Swiss embassy in Baku" but didn't reveal the identity of the person who has been sheltered at the embassy since August.
   
"Switzerland granted him authorization to stay (at the embassy) for humanitarian reasons," the FDFA spokeswoman, Ursina Schmitz, told AFP in an e-mailed comment.
   
"Switzerland has been negotiating with the Azerbaijani authorities and government to find a solution in the interests of this individual," Schmitz added.
   
The director of the Baku-based Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety, a media-rights group, Huseynov is known in Azerbaijan for his fierce criticism of President Ilham Aliyev's human rights record.
   
The oil-rich ex-Soviet republic often responds to dissent with tough measures.
   
Rights groups accuse Aliyev's government of consistently using spurious charges to jail regime critics and of stepping up a campaign to stifle opposition since his election for a third term in 2013.
   
Aliyev, 53, came to power in 2003 following an election seen as flawed by international observers.
   
He took over after the death of his father Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB officer and communist-era leader who had ruled newly independent Azerbaijan with an iron fist since 1993.

In annual report issued earlier this week, Reporters Without Borders ranked Azerbaijan 162nd out of 180 countries surveyed in its ranking of press freedom.

It singled out the country for having "Europe's biggest prison for news providers" with a number of journalists and bloggers behind bars and with media curbed by one-sided regulation.

On its website, Foreign Policy reported that Huseynov is married to an American servicewoman but that he was turned away from the US embassy in Baku after seeking refuge there. 

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MEDIA

Azerbaijan sues French reporters who called it ‘dictatorship’

A court will today hear an unprecedented defamation lawsuit by Azerbaijan against two French journalists in a case that critics describe as an attempt by the ex-Soviet republic to “export its censorship to France."

Published: 5 September 2017 11:18 CEST
Azerbaijan sues French reporters who called it 'dictatorship'
AFP
The case opens a day after a media investigation revealed that Azerbaijan has allegedly been using a a 2.8-billion-dollar slush fund to buy political influence in Europe and boost the country’s international image.
 
The lawsuit against the two television journalists has been slammed by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) as “an act of intimidation highlighting the Azerbaijani government’s contempt for free speech.”
 
“Not content with eradicating all pluralism at home, the regime is now targeting its critics abroad,” RSF said in a statement.
 
Investigative journalist and television host Elise Lucet and journalist and film-maker Laurent Richard are accused of defaming the Azerbaijani government by referring to it as a “dictatorship” when the former Soviet republic received a visit from then French president Francois Hollande two years ago.
 
This is the first time a foreign government has brought a defamation suit against journalists before a French court, according to RSF.
 
The case is due to begin on Tuesday in a court in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
 
The journalists were at the time working on a programme for France 2 television called “Cash Investigation” about the background to Hollande’s trip.
 
Richard was arrested and later released in Azerbaijan at the end of his reporting trip to cover Hollande’s visit to the oil-rich country of 10 million people in in the South Caucasus region.
 
Azerbaijan is ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index. Its government has “systematically eliminated what remained of media independence.”
 
“We must not let Baku export its censorship to France,” said RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said.
 
by Rory Mulholland