Incident reports

Famil Khalilov, 34, is Azerbaijani civic activist who was arrested on May 2, 2024. Khalilov was extradited from Sweden in 2023 and since then, lived in Azerbaijan together with his wife and three children. The activist suffers from cerebral palsy and is officially classified with a first degree disability. Authorities however accuse the activist of […]

On March 6, police stormed the office of Toplum TV, an online news platform in Baku. While the office was searched, the police questioned some fifteen staff members. Among those detained were interns and the tech team. While nine were released after questioning, at least six other journalists were sent to pre-trial custody on bogus […]

[Update] Reports from Fuzuli confirm, that internet access has been restored as of October 24, 2023. Residents say that despite almost a month-long throttling, they have noticed the cash balance on their accounts has been withdrawn even though there was no internet access. Of the companies providing Internet access in Fuzuli, only Aztelekom has thus […]

An online television channel – Red Line Channel, temporarily suspended its work on May 5. According to the founder of the channel, Samira Gasimli, while the channel took a pause on its work a few months back, as the team was considering restructuring the format of its programs, the work of the team was put […]

Azerbaijan Internet Watch was launched around the time when more evidence kept emerging, on the use of authoritarian technology in Azerbaijan. This technology allowed the perpetrator(s) (in most cases identified as an institution or individual affiliated with the government of Azerbaijan] to target Azerbaijan’s civil society. These revelations marked a significant shift in the way […]

The following overview covers some of the prolific trends which illustrate the scope of digital authoritarianism and information controls in Azerbaijan observed and documented in the past year.  Introduction  This report covers the online attacks targeting personal information and devices of human rights defenders, activists, and democracy advocates in 2022. The data is collected through […]

On September 16, Toplum TV, an online news platform had its Facebook page hacked. The hacker accessed the account by hacking one employee’s personal Facebook profile. As a result, the news platform lost 26k of its followers and two weeks’ worth of shared content.  In an interview with Meydan TV, the platform’s director, journalist Khadija […]

Earlier this week, on 12th September 2022, fighting erupted between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops along their border. Over the next few days, community members in Azerbaijan reported that the TikTok app was blocked locally. We analyzed OONI network measurement data to investigate the block. We found that TikTok has been blocked in both Azerbaijan and Armenia over the last few days. In this […]

Political activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev was unlawfully detained yet again according to reports by Azerbaijani media. During the interrogation, which lasted six hours, Hajiyev’s Facebook posts in which he criticized the Ministry of the Internal Affairs were removed.  In his own statement, Hajiyev said, he was threatened that less he removed the posts, and stops writing […]

Asgar Agazade was arrested last year following an accusation by a rape survivor. His victim, is an activist, Sanay Yagmur. Agazade has denied the accusation from the start however, seven months into the ongoing investigation and the trial, he is now facing a possible seven-year prison term. In addition, new evidence based on Agazade’s own […]