News

A confession from journalist Elmaddin Shamilzadeh about the forced removal of social media posts under duress is a testament to persistent violence and intimidation used in Azerbaijan against civic groups. According to the reporting by Voice of America, Shamilzadeh was severely beaten by law enforcement during his detention last month. After the journalist agreed to […]

Activist Latif Mammadov was reportedly taken from his home, after posting on social media a critical post, about President Ilham Aliyev’s comments on recent protests in the village of Soyudlu.  Mammadov is the third civic activist to be detained/questioned by law enforcement over online commentary about the village protests.  On June 22, political activist and […]

Former political prisoner, Giyas Ibrahimov was sentenced to 30 days in administrative detention on bogus charges of resisting police on June 22. On June 24, new charges were leveled against the activist, accusing Ibrahimov of spreading prohibited information on the Internet (Article 388.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). The former was handed down to […]

Amrah Tahmazov, a civic activist was sentenced to 30 days in administrative detention. While police claims the activist was arrested over hooliganism and disobeying police, Tahmazov and his friends, believe the arrest was over his social media post in which he criticized the President Ilham Aliyev.  According to reporting by Meydan TV, Tahmazov was detained […]

Azerbaijan started blocking access to independent news websites in 2017 [more on how this blocking has taken place here]. At the time, the state argued the reasons for blocking these websites were, calls aimed at “forcible change of the constitutional order,” “organization of mass riots,” and other illegal activities. In reality, these websites were considered […]

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 […]

On March 18, civic activist, Elvin Mustafayev (known online as Atilla Khan) was sentenced to 25 days in administrative detention on charges of petty hooliganism and disobeying police in Saatli province of Azerbaijan. According to Mustafayev’s friends, the activist was reprimanded for his critical-of-the-authorities comments and posts on Facebook. Since mid-March, residents of Saatli have […]

An online news platform in Azerbaijan, had its Facebook page hacked by unknown hackers. The incident was reported by the editor-in-chief Samira Gasimli via a Facebook post. Translation: “Dear RLC followers, For the past two months we have been working on new shows and formats. We are getting ready to release new, more interesting, and […]

Nurlan Jafarli, an Azerbaijani blogger was sentenced to 15 days in administrative detention for disobeying police and petty hooliganism according to reporting by MeydanTV.  Jafarli was arrested during a protest outside the Ministry of Justice on March 30. According to the reports, Jafarli, who was among the journalists covering the protest, shared via his Facebook […]

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 […]