Azerbaijan September – November 2020 OONI Measurement Results

On September 27, the government in Azerbaijan introduced a series of restrictions on Internet access as a result of military operations in Nagorno Karabakh. Users in Azerbaijan were left with limited Internet access while access to a number of social media platforms, as well as communication apps, were restricted. 

Azerbaijan Internet Watch, and OONI collected data based on OONI measurements from Azerbaijan. Below is the report looking at data between September 2020 to November 2020. 

According to collected OONI data, Azerbaijan experienced the blocking of independent media websites as well as signs of potential circumvention tool site blocking. However, further OONI Prote testing is required to confirm these censorship events. Azerbaijan Internet Watch continues to monitor the situation. 

Starting on September 27, a number of social media services indicated signs of blocking in Azerbaijan. Among these were:

Whatsapp: between 27th September 2020 to 11th November 2020 , all OONI Probe WhatsApp tests showed signs of WhatsApp blocking. This is illustrated through OONI Probe WhatsApp measurements collected from multiple local networks in Azerbaijan. Previously according to the same measurements, no such instances were documented. The measurements indicated that attempted connections to WhatsApp’s registration service and web interface (web.whatsapp.com) failed. In some cases HTTP request to web.whatsapp.com succeeded while HTTPS request failed as illustrated below. 

This could be an indication of SNI based filtering of WhatsApp. We also observe that the tls_handshakes field presented failures, further suggesting that access to WhatsApp was blocked in Azerbaijan by means of SNI based filtering.

This pattern was seen across multiple ISPs in Azerbaijan between 27th September 2020 to 11th November 2020.

Telegram: Similarly to the testing of WhatsApp, OONI measurements presented signs of Telegram blocking in Azerbaijan between 27th September 2020 to 11th November 2020. But unlike WhatsApp, a few Telegram tests during this period were successful. This is illustrated through OONI Probe Telegram measurements collected from multiple local networks in Azerbaijan between 1st September 2020 to 27th November 2020. The following table illustrates OONI measurements collected from the testing of Telegram and WhatsApp on 5 different networks in Azerbaijan between September 2020 to November 2020.

We not only observed similarities between the date range of potential blocking (of WhatsApp and Telegram), but we also saw potentially similar censorship techniques, as the HTTP requests to Telegram Web (web.telegram.org) timed out as well. Similarly to WhatsApp, we observed a timeout in the TLS handshake, suggesting TLS level interference of Telegram as well. As a result, it is possible that internet users in Azerbaijan couldn’t use the Telegram and WhatsApp mobile apps (on the tested networks) during this time period (between 27th September 2020 to 11th November 2020), even though connections to the tested app endpoints succeeded.

Social media sites: apart from WhatsApp and Telegram, several social media websites presented signs of blocking as well, starting from early October 2020. These include:

It is however, important to note these sites’ limited testing coverage limits Azerbaijan Internet Watch and OONI’s confidence with respect to their blocking, and they have not been tested more recently especially after the conflict ended.

AIW and OONI continue monitoring the situation with blocking.

peace activists targeted online [updated]

Since the war over Nagorno Karabakh began on September 27, scores of peace activists in Azerbaijan have been targeted both online and offline for their views. From public Facebook posts and pages targeting the activists, with threats of violence and physical harm, calls for public shaming and punishment, to questioning at Security Services, this has no doubt been one of the harshest, collective, online public harassment campaigns observed until now in Azerbaijan.

On September 30, an anti-war statement signed by a group of Azerbaijani leftists was published online. Another anti-war statement was published shortly after by an online regional platform Caucasus Talks. In a matter of days, many Azerbaijani activists who signed the statements began receiving online threats, harassment, and deliberate targeting.

A Facebook page called Pinochet Airlines [which was successfully removed after reporting the page to Facebook] was sharing pictures of Azerbaijani signatories, using foul language, humiliating, and calling for public action against them. After the page was taken down, a user, who claimed to allegedly run the page, said in a Facebook post the page lived up to its purpose and although it was taken down, more was yet to come.

Caucasus Talks platform was smeared with allegations to have links to the Armenian Prime Minister’s wife. These allegations were refuted by the platform in a series of tweets:

On Twitter, some users called for the execution of #nowar activists.

In addition to online targeting, some of the activists were called into questioning at State Security Services over their views shared online on several occasions. Most recently, Latif Mammadov was called for questioning on November 16 where he was threatened for his online activities. “One of them asked me a question and when he didn’t like my answer he grabbed me by the collar and just started shaking me vigorously, I pushed him on his shoulder so he let me go, but then his colleague got up and they pushed me down on the chair […] They said they will kill me and my parents if I don’t stop [my online activity],” Mammadov told OC Media in an interview. 

Online and offline harassments and targeting are common in Azerbaijan, especially when targeting high profile political activists and figures. However, this time, deliberate, coordinated targeting against a handful of peace activists and no war advocates, is clearly linked to the nationalist fervor stemming from the on-going fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan, that ended on November 10 with a deal brokered by Russia.