Beneath a veneer of tolerance cultivated with millions of oil dollars, Azerbaijan hides some of the most savage treatment of journalists and activists anywhere in the world. The Central Asian nation ranked 167th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2021 press freedom ranking.
At best, journalists face jail and police repression in Azerbaijan. The government uses a combination of overt and alleged hidden tactics to make life unbearable for those who disagree with it.
An international investigation led by Amnesty International revealed in July that Pegasus spyware was used to tap the phones of over 1,000 Azerbaijanis, many of whom
prominent government critics. More frightening is that which lurks just beneath: blackmail with secretly recorded sex tapes, vicious beatings, and even murder.
While it is difficult to conclusively prove without access to evidence that the state is behind these acts, it is hard to think of another actor who would have a sufficient motive for extensively targeting voices critical of President Ilham Aliyev and his government.
“Whatever threats, harassment or intimidation (journalists) face, the perpetrators always get away with it,” Arzu Geybulla, a Turkey-based Azerbaijani journalist, told the Kyiv Post.
Denouncing relatives Geybulla has lived outside of Azerbaijan since 2010 and has not been back to her homeland since 2014. Her past cooperation with Agos, a Turkey-based Armenian newspaper, has made her the target of harassment campaigns by pro-government media. She gets regular rape and death threats after online publication AzLogos published an op-ed that said she “hates Azerbaijan and its
people.”
Geybulla told the Kyiv Post that targeting family members is often used to pressure dissidents who have left the country. “People complain that their father was hauled in for questioning, or that a family member was dismissed from their job.”
According to Geybulla, such practice forces those in Azerbaijan to denounce their exiled relatives publicly and cut all ties with them.
Family members of opposition figures within Azerbaijan are also targeted.
Jamil Hasanli is the leader of the National Council of Democratic Forces, one of Azerbaijan’s main opposition parties. In March 2021, a sex tape of his 38-year-old daughter Gunel was leaked onto the internet. While there is no official culprit, the opposition leader blamed the Azerbaijani president for the leak.
“Ilham Aliyev has unreasonable hopes that he will deter us from politics in such immoral ways. How my daughter builds and lives her personal life is her own business, it has nothing to do with the state,” Hasanli said at the time.
According to Geybulla, 15 women, usually outspoken activists, were targeted this way in 2020 alone. In most cases, the tape is made by wiring up a hidden camera in the victim’s home without her knowledge.
Threats from abroad
When intimidation and humiliation don’t work, activists and human rights associations say that the Azerbaijani government resorts to outright violence.
Back in Azerbaijan, Mahammad Mirzali was a member of the opposition Popular Front party. He was arrested and tortured after a protest in 2013.
Since 2016, he has lived in Nantes, a French city located 380 kilometers southwest of Paris. Even in France, Mirzali has not found safety from the regime which imprisoned him. He still receives regular anonymous threats from Azerbaijanis in the country.
He was wounded in an October 2020 gun attack while getting into his car, and stabbed at least 16 times by six assailants in March this year, losing three liters of blood. According to Geybulla, violence against journalists and opposition voices increased after Ilham Aliyev acceded to the presidency in October 2003 following his father, Heydar. “The political atmosphere changed under (Ilham) Aliyev’s leadership, who opened a toolbox of authoritarianism not so common under his father,” she said.
The moment Azerbaijanis realized things were moving in a dark direction was on March 2, 2005: the editor-in-chief of the Monitor newspaper, Elmar Huseynov, whose publication was known for investigating government corruption, was shot dead in the doorway of his apartment block.
Investigations have failed to bring much justice. One accomplice was sentenced to two years in prison, while two suspects reportedly live free in Georgia. Imprisonment is also a real risk.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 43 members of the press have been imprisoned in Azerbaijan since 2003. Reporter Polad Aslanov was arrested in June 2019 and charged with selling secrets to Iran and publishing “anti-government” statements. He was found guilty and is currently serving a 16-year prison term.
His wife told the committee that she believed Aslanov was jailed for his investigations of unscrupulous civil servants. Before his arrest, the journalist was preparing to publish an investigation into alleged corruption in the tourism sector involving high-ranking government officials.
Caviar diplomacy
Azerbaijan maintains cordial relations with Western governments by using its oil and gas profits to lobby decision-makers despite these widespread human rights abuses. A 2012 report by the European Stability Initiative quoted an unnamed Azerbaijani diplomat describing how his government would influence members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) by gifting them several kilograms of caviar.
“One kilogram of caviar is worth between 1,300 and 1,400 euros. Each of our friends in PACE receives at every session, four times a year, at least 0.4 to 0.6 kilograms. Our key friends in PACE, who get this, are around 10 to 12 people. There are another three to four people in the secretariat.”
In January 2013, the council controversially voted down a report into political prisoners in Azerbaijan, citing inconsistencies in the definition of a “political prisoner.”
The diplomat also said Aliyev’s government was inviting at least 30 European officials per year to Baku, where they received lavish gifts. “These are real vacations and there are many expensive gifts. Gifts are mostly expensive silk carpets, gold and silver items, drinks, caviar and money.”
The government of Azerbaijan doesn’t feel embarrassed because they are confident that they will not face an intense enough backlash from civil society to threaten their power, Geybulla said. “The people in the country are not holding them accountable because they can’t.”
