In Azerbaijan’s administrative district of Imishli (İmişli), scores of residents were detained, internet speed throttled, and, according to reports by local media, all entry and exit points to the town were placed under heavy control by internal troops dispatched to the area. This followed a protest in reaction to an accident reported on January 18, in which four schoolchildren were struck by a police car following a collision with a civilian car.
Residents first noticed internet throttling following the accident.
In the follow-up reports by local media, several residents who filmed the protests and shared the video content on social media platforms were subject to pressure and intimidation. The content that was posted was forcibly removed.
Qulu Mammadli, a member of the local branch of the opposition Popular Front Party, was summoned by the authorities on January 19. In an interview with OC Media, Mammadli said that after posting about the internal troops entering the town in the afternoon, he was forced to go in for questioning, and he was also forced to remove the video footage he shared on Facebook earlier that day. Other party members, including Sarvan Ahmadov, were also briefly detained, questioned and forced to remove social media posts, according to reporting by Meydan TV.
A member of the opposition Musavat party, Alikram Khurshidov, was handed a 10-day administrative detention over his social media posts about the accident.
The government of Azerbaijan has throttled internet access before and has deployed an arsenal of surveillance technology to keep tabs on its citizens. An annual report on internet freedoms by Freedom House ranked the country “not free” in its most recent country report.