In September 2024, the Milli Majlis (Azerbaijani Parliament) established a special commission on foreign interference and hybrid threats. MP Ramid Namazov chairs the commission, which comprises several members of parliament. The commission was set up shortly after Pavel Durov visited Azerbaijan (more on that here and here.)
The commission’s mandate includes preparing reports on instances of external interference and hybrid threats and formulating proposals to counteract them. It is authorized to issue statements, conduct public hearings, collaborate with relevant executive and judicial authorities, and participate in committee discussions of draft laws. The commission is set to operate during the five-year term of the 7th Milli Majlis. The latter was formed following a snap parliamentary election that took place in a restricted environment, with voter fraud and violations abounding.
The set-up of the commission was justified as a need to prevent the alleged destruction of the state and neutralize the threats of a hybrid war.
In November 2024, the commission published its first report shortly after Baku completed hosting COP29 – the global climate conference. The report looked at “primary hybrid threats” that targeted Azerbaijan during COP29 with a list of “suspects,” which included foreign states and international human rights organizations, which the commission alleged were behind these “threats.”
Among many references, the report mentioned coordinated efforts by fake accounts causing the spread of disinformation. What the report identified as disinformation were statements, reports, investigations, and countless articles describing the state of freedom and human rights in the country. There was no mention of the government’s coordinated campaign, as reported by The Guardian here.
The report also targeted several international human rights organizations, governments, and their legislative bodies, who have published reports/statements on the ongoing crackdown. These claims were screenshots of all the content that questioned the government’s track record on climate justice, rights, and freedoms.
The report’s overall conclusion centered around a premise that “funds invested in these campaigns” were “largely wasted” as the campaign failed to reach a “broad audience” or “achieve its objectives.”
In January 2025, the commission reported that as part of the measures to protect the integrity and security of the Azerbaijani state, it continued to monitor social media platforms mainly from the “neighboring state” [without mentioning any names] to identify insidious activities that may pose a threat to the unity and national-moral values of the Azerbaijani people. As a result, the commission identified more than 300 accounts, including Facebook (124 accounts), Instagram (67 accounts), Telegram (67 accounts), YouTube (32 accounts), and X (10 accounts.)
The monitoring “revealed that harmful and radical religious-ideological propaganda aimed at sowing discord among our citizens, creating polarization, changing the constitutional structure of the state, and forming distrust towards state institutions was being carried out in a coordinated manner.”
The commission then encouraged Azerbaijani citizens “not to believe false and fake information” and said the monitoring findings were “submitted to the relevant state bodies to take appropriate measures.”