The following article was originally printed on
RFE/RL.
***
In an escalation of a targeted campaign against RFE/RL, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Communications and High Technologies has filed an official complaint with a Baku court requesting that RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani website,
azadliq.org
, be banned.
The Sabail district court ruled on April 27 to convene on May 1 to begin a review of the ministry’s complaint, which also seeks to ban the websites of the nongovernmental Azadliq newspaper (unrelated to azadliq.org) and Meydan TV, and the Turan TV and Azerbaycan Saati TV channels.
RFE/RL President Thomas Kent called the ministry’s action an attempt at “blatant censorship that is intended to intimidate the independent press, and which shows nothing but contempt for basic rights and international conventions.”
The complaint filed with the court indicates that the
website has been blocked
since March 27, subsequent to
recent legislation
that tightens Internet restrictions and authorizes the Azerbaijani government, subject to judicial review, to ban sites for posting content deemed to promote violence, hatred, or extremism, violate privacy, or constitute slander. Independent monitors
confirmed
in an April 10 report that
Delta Telecom
, one of Azerbaijan’s biggest Internet service providers, had used “dedicated equipment” to interfere with traffic to the Azerbaijani Service’s
website
.
According to Azerbaijani legislation, a guilty judgement by the court against azadliq.org could be used as grounds to prosecute the website’s correspondents. In 2014, authorities
imprisoned
prominent investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova on
charges
of encouraging an attempted suicide and financial crimes in a case that foreign governments and rights advocates condemned as politically motivated.
Ismayilova’s arrest came just weeks before Azerbaijani state agents
raided and sealed
RFE/RL’s Baku bureau, forcing it to
close
in May, 2015. RFE/RL
continues
to pursue legal remedies in this case.
RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service is a major source of independent news for the country, actively publishing on
Facebook
,
YouTube
,
Instagram
, and other digital platforms. It recently reported on the
financial activities
of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and members of his inner circle, and
investigated
costs associated with the September 2016 referendum that extended the term of the presidency to seven years, and which created the post of Vice President, to which the president’s wife was appointed in February.
