My personal blog, my thoughts.
The number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan remains approximately the same from year to year. The president regularly signs pardon decrees but the “vacancies” on bunk beds in prisons are quickly occupied by newly-arrived opponents of the political elite of Azerbaijan.
The following is a Meydan TV report about how the possibility of pardon is used to manipulate political prisoners and how the prisoners themselves have become bargaining chips in the Azerbaijani government’s foreign policy.
YEREVAN, September 26. /ARKA/. Addressing the P the 73rd session of UN General Assembly in New York Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict continues to prevail on Armenia’s foreign policy agenda. In his words, the status and security of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) is an absolute priority of the Republic of Armenia in the negotiation process.
He said any attempt to resolve the conflict through military means represents a direct threat to the regional security, democracy and human rights.
Read more “Azerbaijani leadership’s intention is to cleanse Armenians from Karabakh, Pashinyan says”
Azerbaijani society has never been tolerant toward sexual minorities, but no one expected the cruel and large-scale violence that occurred last year. At least a hundred people were humiliated, beaten and raped. People who were suspected of being gay were blackmailed and warned not to walk in the central streets of Baku. Meydan TV investigated the possible reasons for the police violence immediately after it happened last year and we now return to this topic to find out what has changed in Azerbaijan over the past year.
Article by Leyla and Arif Yunus.
June 28, 2018 was exactly 40 years from the date of our marriage. But we did not celebrate this date. We now live not in our native Baku, where we regularly arranged happy family holidays, celebrated anniversaries in the circle of loved ones where we could visit the graves of our parents … In April 2016 we were forced to leave our homeland to save our life and health so as not to leave our daughter Dinara orphaned.
Read more “Mr. Macron, “Ilham Aliyev’s hands are stained with the blood of innocent victims””
It has been a busy month for the Cyber Security Service at Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Transport, Communication and High Technologies.
Since early August, the service has targeted a number of independent news websites – first requesting them to remove specific content, and later blocking access to these websites altogether. The blocking came after the websites featured articles on the corrupt practices of certain government officials, other stories merely reported on local grievances. Editors and journalists have been summoned to the prosecutor office for questioning over the published articles, though the editors are reluctant to comply. In their public statements, editors say there was no slander nor misinformation in any of the articles published.
Read more “Azerbaijan’s blocking of websites is a sign of further restrictions online”
The country of Azerbaijan has issued an arrest warrant for Dan Bilzerian, the social media celebrity with the lavish lifestyle known as the “King of Instagram.”
PEOPLE confirms that the Investigative Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan has initiated a criminal case against Bilzerian, alleging he illegally visited Nagorno Karabakh, a region that is the subject of a conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Authorities allege that Bilzerian illegally acquired grenades and firearms before “demonstratively” opening fire at a shooting range.
Read more “‘King of Instagram’ Dan Bilzerian Has Warrant Out for His Arrest in Azerbaijan”
In a $170 million settlement paid to the US government for bribery cases in six countries, Rolls-Royce has admitted that it paid $7.8 million in bribes to SOCAR, the Azerbaijan state-owned oil and gas company.
The bribes were paid by the company’s American affiliate Rolls-Royce Energy Systems (RRESI) in order to ensure large orders of turbines in Azerbaijan. The US Justice Department filed the suit because an American company was involved and because it considered SOCAR to be “controlled by the Azeri government and performed government functions for Azerbaijan.”
A cargo airline owned by a company with past ties to Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family won some lucrative contracts from the U.S. military, according to documents obtained in 2016 through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed in the U.S. by a reporter for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
In late 2005, as the war in Afghanistan was in its fourth year, the U.S. government began contracting with the carrier, Silk Way Airlines, to transport ammunition and other non-lethal materials to U.S.-trained Afghan forces and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the country.
The Azerbaijani authorities have pulled the plug on the news agency APA, an indication that even reliably pro-government media are not safe in the ongoing crackdown on press in the country.
APA, as well as its sister agencies Lent.az and APA Sport in the company APA Holding, were all shut down on August 1. The authorities did not provide any explanation, but media observers in the country suggest that there could be internal business struggles behind the move.
Read more “Speculations swirl around closure of pro-government Azerbaijani news agency”
KARS, Turkey — The history of this city, about 30 miles from the border with Armenia, may best be told through its former Armenian cathedral, the Church of the Holy Apostles, poised at the base of an imposing fortress.
Built in the 10th century by an Armenian king, it was turned into a mosque three times and once into a Russian Orthodox church. It was briefly resurrected as an Armenian church in 1919 before the modern secular Turkish state expropriated it in 1921, eventually turning it into a petroleum depot, then into a museum, then again into a mosque.
Read more “Turkey Makes Overtures to Minorities, but Old Enmities Linger”