Media Rights Institute revealed the new report about the legal status of media in Azerbaijan. Report covers the issues surrounding July 2010. Report emphasises that, the intensity of convictions of critic newspaper reporters on offences with severe penalties as slander and insult under the criminal code is not reduced. There was imprisonment requirement of 4 journalists convicted under the Article 147 and 158 of Criminal Code. If courts which rarely touches new measures of convictions secure the complaints regarding to cases on freedom of expression, correspondents of most popular and country’s largest circulated newspapers such as editor-in- chief of newspaper “Yeni Müsavat” Rauf Arifoglu,..
Today, Media Rights Institute (MRI) program coordinator Khalid Agaliyev was called to the Baku City Chief Police Department (BCCPD) for the semi-annual report on legal status of media published on June 20. According to MRI, Khaled Agaliyev met with Deputy Chief of Baku City Chief Police Department Yashar Aliyev and with Baku City Deputy Prosecutor Fazil Hasanaliyev. The meeting lasted one hour. Y. Aliyev and F. Hasanaliyev noted that they scrutinized carefully the issues in semi-annual report and expressed their concerns about pressures and attacks against journalists. They asked to present references about cases referred in report and revealed that all attacks and pressures conducted against media and journalists are investigated properly.
This report covers the important events regarding to mass media in Azerbaijan within the first half of 2010. Generalizes and results in report rely on monitoring of that events. Monitoring was based on information about journalists which was imparted in mass media, on clarifications of civil society bodies, on information which these bodies disseminate to society and the cases which legal aids ware provided by Media Rights Institute...
“Freedom of expression is curtailed in Azerbaijan today - major improvements are needed” said the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, presenting today his report on the country. Following a visit carried out in March, the report focuses on freedom of expression and association, conduct of law enforcement officials, administration of justice, and contains some observations on the visit to the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan...
Freedom of expression campaigners will protest on Thursday 3 June outside the Azerbaijani embassy in London, calling for an end to the persecution of jailed journalist Eynulla Fatullayev. Amnesty International UK, ARTICLE 19, English PEN and Index on Censorship will also hand in a letter to the embassy – signed by key literary figures including Monica Ali, Alan Ayckbourn, William Boyd, and Philip Pullman - calling for Fatullayev’s immediate release and for new politically-motivated charges against him to be dropped. Newspaper editor Fatullayev, 33, is currently serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence based on trumped-up charges of terrorism and defamation. In April this year the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that he had been wrongfully imprisoned for exercising his right to freedom of expression and that he should be immediately released. Despite being a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, the Azerbaijan authorities responded by questioning the court’s authority. Chingiz Esgerov, Azerbaijan’s representative to the ECtHR, argued that “the ECtHR has no authority to give orders to the courts of other countries” and “the country’s legislation does not envision the release of a prisoner only on a basis of the ECtHR”...
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