The Azerbaijani government has taken aim at Meydan TV, one of the few independent Azeri-language news outlets, after the station alleged that Baku under-reported the number of Azerbaijani deaths in this month’s fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, the station says.
The Azerbaijani prosecutor’s office has not released any public information about its investigation, but
a lawyer for Meydan, Elchin Sadigov,
stated that 15 Azerbaijanis have been named in a government investigation into supposed tax evasion and illegal business activity; the usual charges against journalists and those who refuse to toe the government’s line.
“We consider this as a declaration of war against independent journalism in Azerbaijan,” Meydan’s founder, activist Emin Milli, commented to EurasiaNet.org.
None of the individuals has yet been charged, though
the station reports
that the government banned “a number of journalists” from leaving Azerbaijan as well as searched their residences and took work equipment without a warrant.
The government has not responded to these reports. Prosecutors could not be reached for comment.
Earlier, Meydan TV had come under attack from mainstream, pro-government news outlets and officials alike for its critical coverage of the so-called Four-Day War,
the April 2-5 flare-up
in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over separatist Nagorno Karabakh. Amidst the fighting, all sides – Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Karabakhi separatists – made grand claims of losses inflicted on their respective enemies.
Using a combination of citizen journalism and conversations with servicemen’s families, Meydan TV alleged that the government actually had under-reported its own number of casualties (31) by a factor of three.
The hawkish, pro-government news service
Haqqin.az
accused Meydan of including wounded soldiers in this tally, and relying on numbers somehow provided by Armenia. Milli dismissed the accusations as preposterous. “We have carefully vetted and cross-checked the reports we received from our reporters, citizens and families of the deceased,” he said.
Milli reduces the attacks on his Berlin-based outlet to the “national-patriotic bacchanalia” unleashed by the authorities in the days before the April 5 ceasefire. He also believes that the entire conflict was meant to divert Azerbaijanis’ attention from the country’s sputtering economy, damaged by low oil prices, and rampant corruption. Unusually
bold displays of public anger
against the hydrocarbon-rich country’s government broke out earlier this year.
That said, the Azerbaijani authorities harassed Meydan TV’s reporters with arrests and investigations long before the conflict. Milli’s own brother-in-law, Nazim Agabeyov, was arrested last year on charges of possessing illegal narcotics.
The British NGO
Index on Censorship
charged that “This investigation confirms the government has no intention of changing its approach toward independent media and free expression in the country.”*
Azerbaijan recently released
four journalists from prison
, but others remain, including investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova, whose case is now on appeal. **
Milli, though, says that the pressure against Meydan will not interrupt its work.
“Even if the authorities decide to go back to the Stone Age, block Facebook and YouTube, we will find a way to do our journalism,” he said.
*
The Index on Censorship has received support from the Open Society Foundation. EurasiaNet.org operates under the auspices of the Open Society Foundation-New York City’s Eurasia Project.
Originally published by
Eurasianet
.
