From whom or from what should the media be free?

Baku/03.05.22/Turan: May 3 is the World Press Freedom Day. Emin Huseynov, head of the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety, talks about the freedom of the media, its activities, the situation in which they are and pressure on them in Azerbaijan in the program "Difficult Question".

According to him, over the past year, the situation with the freedom of the press in Azerbaijan has worsened even more. “A recently adopted document of the Council of Europe states that Azerbaijan is one of the countries where there are the most problems with freedom of speech, and perhaps the most problematic country in the CE member countries,” he said.

According to Huseynov, in terms of violations related to freedom of the press, Azerbaijan may even be ahead of Russia.

“Since the end of last year, attacks on the media in Azerbaijan have intensified. At the same time, Russia was excluded from PACE and now this shameful championship belongs to Azerbaijan. And these trends continue this year in an even tougher form. Thus, in February of this year, a 24-year-old journalist Avaz Shihmamedov (pseudonym Avaz Hafizli) was killed with particular cruelty. Not so long ago, public activist and blogger Bahtiyar Hajiyev was kidnapped by an organized criminal group, beaten, insulted and threatened with physical violence. The aim of the kidnappers was to force the blogger to remove critical posts,” he said.

Huseynov stressed that journalists and human rights activists, according to PACE criteria, have the same subjectivity. Therefore, the rights of Avaz Hafizli and Bahtiyar Hajiyev should be protected in the same way as if they were journalists. He also noted that the cause of the death of Avaz Hafizli is unknown, the investigation and the court should clarify this issue.

“Avaz Hafizli repeatedly appealed to law enforcement agencies with a complaint that he was threatened with death. Some influencers, in particular blogger Sevinj Huseynova, expressed dissatisfaction with Hafizli's activities and openly called for him to be killed. However, representatives of law enforcement agencies did not take the measures provided for by law, did not react to this,” he said, adding that the government wants to put the case on the murder of Hafizli on the brakes.

“The investigation is trying to present this as a crime committed on a family basis. There was a message that the killer of Hafizli was detained. However, judging by the fact that the necessary investigative actions are not being taken, the investigation is not trying to find those who ordered this crime. It seems that the authorities decided to limit themselves to punishing the perpetrator,” the human rights activist believes.

According to Huseynov, the other condition to develop  media  is self-financing.

“It is necessary to create conditions for the emergence of an advertising market. In addition, the transparency of the activities of the offices of international organizations in Baku is necessary. One of the areas of their activity, just, is to support the activities of the media. And foreign donors allocate considerable funds for this, about 9,000 euros a day. However, there is no return from the activities of these organizations,” he noted.--0--