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former minister detained after posts on social media [updated]

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On July 13, Azerbaijan arrested, former Minister of Defense, Rahim Gaziyev on the grounds of incitement against the state and provocation online.

“[…]former Defense Minister Rahim Gaziyev purposefully spread inappropriate news about the events on social media and reasonable suspicions have been found that these acts aimed at weakening its defense capabilities of the Republic of Azerbaijan, provoking people to riots and openly calling for the seizure of state power,” wrote state news agency APA

The 77-year-old retired minister was sentenced to four months in pre-trial detention on July 14.

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Gaziyev served as the Minister of Defense between 1992-1993. He was then arrested in 1993 and allegedly escaped prison in 1994. In 1995 he was sentenced to death in absentia. He was re-arrested in 1996. Gaziyev was pardoned in 2005.

On September 4, the indictment was changed and Gaziyev was released under house arrest.

the tale of blocked websites [updated June 14, 2024]

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[Update] On June 13, 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled, “that Azerbaijan violated an article of the Human Rights Convention that enshrines freedom of speech by shutting down several news outlets between 2017 and 2018.”

The complete text of the ruling is available here. 

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In July of last year, in their response to the Government of Azerbaijan, four of the websites that were blocked for access in Azerbaijan in 2017, reiterated their claim that the ban violates their right to freedom of expression. According to EHRAC, this response came following the Government’s [of Azerbaijan] submissions to the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”). 

EHRAC (European Human Rights Advocacy Center) represents four of the websites – Meydan TV, Azadliq Info, Azerbaycan Saadi, and Turan TV and has been working in tandem with local legal partners on the case. 

At the time of blocking these websites in 2017, the Government of Azerbaijan argued “a number of articles published by the four critical news websites included calls aimed at “forcible change of the constitutional order”, “organization of mass riots”, and other illegal activities.” 

In reality, all four websites are considered independent and/or platforms affiliated with opposition parties or their critical position against broader government practices and policies adopted by the ruling government of Azerbaijan. As a result, the decision to block them was based on the legal claims that lacked evidence. This was further reflected in the review process when the decision to block these platforms was implemented. According to EHRAC, “no effective and independent review took place in the first instance decision to block access to the websites in 2017, and in subsequent appeals. The courts simply accepted the authorities’ allegations at face value and made no attempt to adequately consider or explain why the content was unlawful.”

The intentions behind the blocking decision were further reflected in subsequent actions taken by the Government of Azerbaijan against the online platforms. Such that, at the time of the first decision to block these websites for access in 2017, the Azerbaijani Government claimed these websites continued disseminating their content through VPN services or social media platforms and therefore the action taken against them did not cause significant changes to the published content. However, in February 2020, the Ministry of Transportation, Communications and High Technologies “requested the domestic courts to impose a ban on the applicants’ ability to share their content through VPN services and social media platforms.” 

While access to the said websites remains blocked in Azerbaijan further developments signal a consistent pattern of censorship and impunity.

in Azerbaijan a COVID tracing app draws much suspicion over privacy issues [updated]

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In July, authorities in Azerbaijan released it’s very own COVID tracing tracker application. Launched by Tebib (Azerbaijan Administration of Regional Medical Division) the app was quick to draw attention, especially over its privacy issues. 

e-Tebib is just one of the deluge of apps that have been unveiled in recent months by various governments, promising to detect COVID-19 exposure and not only. According to this detailed MIT review, some of these apps are “lightweight and temporary, while others are pervasive and invasive” like the Chinese version which attains access to user’s identity, location, online payment history “so that police can watch for those who break quarantine rules”. 

In Azerbaijan, the police were already on the watch, with a mandatory SMS mechanism that required citizens to receive permission slips via SMS before going outside.  So why ask citizens to install an app, that technically does nothing new or does it?

Features and concerns

According to the app’s description, “E-Tebib is designed to inform users in real-time about the number of patients (both sick and recovered) in Azerbaijan.” Currently, the official data is available here and the numbers are updated once a day – based on the numbers reported by the Operational Headquarters set up under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan (the unit was established on February 27). It is unlikely the app will be providing real-time indicators when the main body in charge only shares the information once a day. 

In addition, article 4.4 in the user agreement of the app, explicitly states that any information, obtained through the app, may not be precise, correct, or trusted. 

And yet, the app also claims to reduce the number of infected patients by informing users of potential COVID infected patients around them via Bluetooth technology. 

Although the app claims it does not collect any personal data aside from user’s phone number the article 5.3 of the license agreement states, the center [the Ministry of Communication, Transportation and High Technologies who owns the app’s license] collects users’ names, last names, phone numbers, social media accounts, emails, national ID numbers, and location. Article 5.4 mentions the center sharing of this information with third parties. These third parties may analyze collected information including users’ browsing history [The center does claim that it does not allow third-parties, to use the obtained information for other purposes]. Article 5.5.1 states the center may share users’ information with government bodies and/or representatives’ legal requests; court orders; or under any other legal condition. Article 5.6 states that users’ information may be shared with third parties in other countries for security purposes. Article 5.10 states that all user-related data is kept for a month. But it fails to explain whether the same expiry date applies to “third parties” that may have accessed users’ information.

The application is developed by A2Z Advisors LLC and the app’s privacy policy is linked to the company’s website. The landing page, however, does not provide any information on the app’s privacy policy. When reached out for a comment, AIW was recommended to send an email which at the time of writing this post remains unanswered. Similarly, in the App Store for IOs when clicking on “App Support” tab, the page once again leads to A2Z company website but does not actually provide any information related to the App. Instead, the privacy policy is accessible via this link that a user can access only after downloading and launching the app. 

According to the app’s version history at App Store, the application was released a month ago. The latest “update” was done 2 days ago [July 7].

The app’s further transparency criticism comes from the fact that it is not an open-source code and its license belongs to the Ministry of Communication, Transportation, and High Technologies. 

The biggest concern – the location of the data storage; the duration of the data storage; and who has access to this data.    

In Azerbaijan however, other concerns have also been voiced – that the application is only available for native speakers and that ex-pats living in the country are unable to use the application. It is also not catered to people with disabilities. 

FaktYoxla, a fact-checking platform in Azerbaijan concluded after a detailed legal analysis over the license agreement that e-Tebib is not designed in accordance with national legislation on data privacy.

On July 10, following widespread privacy concerns and questions over the app’s transparency, changes were made to its terms of the agreement. Originally users’ information was transferred to third parties, which were not explicitly defined in the agreement. At the time, independent experts and lawyers said this was against Article 32 of Azerbaijan’s state constitution and in violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.  Azerbaijan’s constitution, namely, Article 8, stipulates that no one has a right to collect personal information without individual’s permission. The convention, on the other hand, refers to respect to privacy. 

The new license agreement now says that only under necessary circumstances, and within the normative legal framework personal information may be transferred to third parties. The revised agreement, still, fails to explicitly mention the precise list of institutions considered under third parties.

Although this last point was later addressed by Fuad Niftaliyev – the head of the app development project. Niftaliyev explained that the third parties referred to in the agreement are: Ministry of Health, Tebib, and the Operational Headquarters [set up under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan]. According to Niftaliyev, the collected information is stored on the servers operated by the Ministry of Communication and Information. The last point is itself problematic, as the transparency of government institutions in Azerbaijan is problematic especially as surveillance technology is widely used by the ministries alike. 

For potential users of the app, this remains problematic, especially when there is no option “B” if one disagrees with terms of service.

member of an opposition party fined over social media post [Last update July 9]

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July 6, Gachay Gafarov, member of the opposition party Popular Front, sentenced to 15 days in administrative detention according to Azadliq Radio. Gafarov is accused of disobeying police. According to party headquarters, Gafarov was detained over his social media post critical of the police that Gafarov posted on the day of the police. 

July 5, member of an opposition party Popular Front, Alikhan Rajabli, detained over social media posts say party headquarters. Rajabli was detained on July 4, in Masalli region by the local police. According to family members, Rajabli was taken from his home and taken to the police.

June 29, member of an opposition party Musavat, Jeyhun Mammadli was fined in a total amount of 200AZN. Mammadli was accused of disobeying police. However, party members believe Mammadli was fined over his posts and comments often critical of the authorities on social media. 

Mammadli was taken from his home on June 27  to the Zardab Regional Police department. At the station, police prepared a protocol, where Mammadli was accused of disobeying police according to Article 535.1 of Administrative Offenses. He was let go until the court hearing.

On June 29, Zardab Regional Court found Mammadli guilty and fined him in a total amount of 200AZN [approximately 120USD].

political activist detained over social media post

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June 27, member of an opposition party Popular Front, Faig Rashidov was sentenced to ten days in administrative detention on charges of violating the Code of Administrative Offenses Article 388.1 (placing online or on information/communication networks information otherwise banned).  

Rashidov was previously subject to pressure for his activism and political views.

Popular Front members have been regularly persecuted in recent months. Currently, at least 10 party members are behind bars. All are accused of various crimes, none however are legitimate, claim the party headquarters. 

arqument.az Facebook page hacked

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June 24, editor of an online news platform arqument.az Shamshad Agha reports that the platform’s Facebook page was hacked. 

The damage was significant Agha told AIW. Around 11,000 page likes were deleted as well as some 12,000 followers. All of the platform’s posts until March were also removed. 

The admins were able to restore access to the page since the attack.

Arqument.az website was blocked in August 2018, following a decision issued by Sabail District Court. A few days later, Baku Court of Appeal annulled district court’s decision. However, the website was blocked once again in April 2019 by the Ministry of Communication, Transportation and High Technologies after publishing the story about protests in Jalilabad district. This time, the blocking took place without a court order.

According to the editor, he was informed that unless he removes the reported story, the blocking will remain in place. However, the news platform refused and instead filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Communication, Transportation and High Technologies. After that, the blocking was lifted by the Ministry while the platform’s lawsuit continues.

The website was also subject to cyber attacks following blocking.

government rolls out an e-permission requirement for journalists

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June 20, the Cabinet of Ministers rolled out a new requirement for journalists and mass media resources during the two weeks of strict quarantine regime effective between June 21 and July 5. According to the new regulation, journalists must register with an e-permission platform icaze.e-gov.az  The requirement concerns freelance and full-time journalists. Critics say the new regulation intends to limit the work of independent journalists and therefore access to independent information. 

According to the government website, before a journalist can obtain the permission slip, first, the person with the “seal of authority” of the media platform must apply. However, the majority of independent and opposition news sites operating inside and outside the country, work online and often do not carry the “seal of authority”. They are also likely not to be registered as platforms with the Ministry of Justice. 

Speaking on the issue, the media law expert Alasgar Ahmadoglu told Voice of America that in the absence of the state of emergency [Azerbaijan never declared the state of emergency but only imposed a strict quarantine regime] the Cabinet of Ministers cannot introduce such a requirement. Such regulation may only be possible according to article 112 of the constitution that states, the professional work of journalists can be limited during a state of emergency. 

The same day, Chief of the Public Relations Department of the Main State Traffic Police Department, Colonel Kamran Aliyev added further clarifications to the list of requirements. Aliyev noted that first, the media platform itself must register their journalist online using the e-registration system. If the media platform is registered in Baku, then in addition to the capital, it can dispatch journalists to Sumgayit and across Absheron region. However, the journalists will require a separate permission slip if they intend to travel to other regions in the country during the quarantine regime explained Aliyev. For this, the journalists [in addition to the registering online] must obtain a permission slip from his/her media platform indicating that the journalist is going a business trip on specified dates. The rule also applies to television channels inviting a guest – the gust’s name must also be registered within the system. This will help to identify whether the person was indeed invited to speak in case he/she stopped by the police for control. 

The online permission system was introduced on April 2 for institutions and organizations considered eligible to continue working during COVID19. No further explanations were provided on the storage of the personal data and the duration this platform will keep records of organisations, institutions, and the names of their staff. 

news platform targeted online

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On June 18, a popular online news platform, Meydan TV was targeted online. Its social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram were subject to a digital attack.

According to Meydan TV, the platform lost two years of content on its Azerbaijani language Facebook page while on Instagram it lost at least two months of posts. 

Previously, the platform lost all of its content on its Russian language Facebook page including some, on its Azerbaijani language Facebook page. Meydan TV’s website was also subject to DDoS attacks in May shortly after the country’s top independent news agency Turan was targeted in a similar manner.

Targeting accounts and pages of independent news platforms, organizations, initiatives, activists, and journalists are common in Azerbaijan. AIW has documented some of these and they are available on this platform.  

Azerbaijan may end up blocking more online content

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Four months ago, the Plenum of the Supreme Court in Azerbaijan annulled previous court decisions issued by the Courts of Appeal and Cassation regarding five news websites that were blocked in 2017. On June 5, the Plenum sent the cases back to the Baku Court of Appeal for reconsideration.

The five media platforms include Meydan TV, Azadliq Radio [Azerbaijan Service for Radio Free Europe], Turan TV, Azerbaijansaadi, and Azadliq newspaper [not related to Azadliq Radio]. In March 2017, the Ministry of Communication [which later became the Ministry of Transportation, Communication, and High Technologies] restricted access to these online resources on the grounds these websites’ content was threatening national security and promoted “violence, hatred, or extremism” and “violated privacy or constituted slander.” The forensics carried out by an independent organization Virtual Road showed evidence of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology used to interfere with access even before there was a court ruling in place. By May 2017, the Ministry had a court ruling to block access. In December 2017, the Court of Appeal in Baku upheld the court ruling from May.

The blocking of these news resources came shortly after the National Parliament of Azerbaijan adopted changes to the law on Information, Informatisation, and access to Information. With the new changes, authorities were allowed to block access to any website on the grounds it contained prohibited information, was posing danger to the state or society, and in the case, the website owner failed to remove content within eight hours of receiving the notification.

In 2017, the Ministry asked for the following in its court appeal:

  1. court order to prevent access to five platforms’ websites;
  2.  block all other resources offering access to the content (this included YouTube, Facebook, and other online resources);

In its decision, the Sabail Court ruled in favor of the first request, leaving the second demand out. The Ministry was satisfied and blocking became effective immediately. 

Three years later, the Ministry of Communication, Transportation, and High Technologies went straight to the Plenum.  According to media law expert Khaled Aghaly, the reason is that the Ministry wants to expand blocking. Considering the experience with the previous court decisions and rulings in Azerbaijan, the chances of the court ruling coming out in favor of the blocked websites are dim. 

Although the Ministry has not explicitly mentioned any of the platforms or names of other resources that have shared content from these blocked news outlets, Aghaly explains that in the new complaint the Ministry claims that the blocked news resources continue to share their content online using other “resources” and that other media platforms also share the content from these blocked platforms. It is possible that the Ministry is looking for ways to not only prevent access to more online news sites but also, access to social media platforms of Azadliq Radio, Meydan TV, and others.

Can individual social media accounts and/or content be blocked? 

Technically it can. There are previous instances where Facebook did limit access to certain content. This was the case in Thailand in 2017 when Thai users of the social media platform no longer had access to a video that showed the country’s king at a mall in Germany, his tattoos exposed and accompanied by one of his mistresses. According to this Vice story, Facebook blocked the video based on Thailand’s government legislation that deems it insulting to the king and in violation of the country’s laws banning criticism of the monarchy. 

Another option to prevent access is on an ISP level. An example would be what happened in Kazakhstan in 2019 when the government there instructed local ISPs to force their users into installing a government-issued certificate on all their devices, and in every browser. With this certificate installed, the government had access to users’ HTTPS traffic that normally would keep it anonymous. In case, users refused to install the certificate, they were blocked from accessing the internet altogether. At the time, the Kazakh Ministry of Digital Development Innovation and Aerospace said the measure was “aimed at enhancing the protection of citizens, government bodies and private companies from hack attacks, internet fraudsters and other  types of cyber threats.”

Similarly, “mobile service providers instructed their customers to install encryption software on mobile phones that would allow security services to intercept data traffic and circumvent email and messaging applications’ encryption.”

It is worth noting that ISPs in Azerbaijan are bound to the government for the main internet backbone provider in Azerbaijan is government-owned Delta Telekom. In addition, the history of collaboration between mobile operators and the Ministry of the Interior is full of examples when private information of customers was handed over and as a result, led to further targeting. 

Impunity for all these user violations is rampant.

man arrested over social media posts

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A resident of a village in Goychay administrative district, Ahliman Aliyev was sentenced to 15 days in administrative detention over his social media posts. In an interview with Meydan TV, Aliyev said he was arrested for criticizing the head of the administrative district Mehdi Salimzade online. 

While in detention, he was beaten and humiliated. After his release, he was threatened by the Deputy Police Chief Fakhri Alsanov.  

Aliyev said he was written countless letters to the president, about the head of the administrative district. When he did not hear back, he took his complaints online.

Aliyev was accused of disobeying the police. 

Detentions over social media comments and posts are not uncommon in Azerbaijan. Just this month, a number of social media users were detained over their posts on social media platforms, criticizing the police and the fake flashmob that was organized in the capital of Baku in support of the Azerbaijani police.