Devilish "Three Six" Flats in Journalists' Houses

Nobody can take away the apartments donated to journalists by the decree of the President of Azerbaijan, Vugar Safarli, executive director of the State Support Fund for Media Development, said on Wednesday after residents of the Journalists House posted angry posts on social networks. They accused Safarli that the Fund does not allow them to privatize apartments. The dissatisfaction of the journalists was also caused by the fact that Safarli called them tenants.

Do all the inhabitants of two built houses and one house for journalists, which is under construction, have a moral and legal basis to demand the privatization of apartments? Turn to the numbers. At the opening of the second House of Journalists, President I. Aliyev said that there were 156 houses in the first House, commissioned in 2013; 255 in the second house, commissioned in 2017; and in the third house under construction, there are also 255 apartments. All together, there are 666 apartments in the in three houses. It is bad number. According to religious mythology, Three Sixes (666) is the number of the devil.

In a published announcement by the State Support Foundation for Media Development in the early years of the distribution of apartments, it was said that the right to receive free housing are journalists who do not have their own housing, who have been working continuously for the past three years in the Azerbaijani media, which are periodically published or broadcast.

However, today on the Foundation"s http://kivdf.gov.az/# there are no conditions for providing apartments. Consequently, 666 apartment recipients (255 will receive in the third house) are journalists working for three years in the same media. Is it so?

More than 5,200 media outlets are registered in Azerbaijan, the Ministry of Justice reported. However, in the lists of recipients of apartments in two houses, you can count about 50 types of media. In this case, some are repeated. Consequently, on average, in each edition about 12 employees received new apartments. However, looking at the list of residents of the second house, you can see that if in television channels the number of recipients of apartments reaches six, then in the remaining media there are no more than three such lucky people, and often 1-2 people.

One of the journalists who received an apartment in the second house in 2017 told Turan on condition of anonymity that about half of the inhabitants of this house are not journalists.

To confirm, we turn to the list of those who received apartments in the second house of journalists, commissioned in 2017: https://modern.az/az/news/138748B.

This list of 255 people includes 32 "independent journalists" and "veteran journalists", that is, who have not been working continuously in the media for the past three years and without interruption. Among the recipients of apartments, according to information available to Turan, there are owners of not only spacious apartments, but also owners of two-story private houses.

In addition to 32 "independent and veterans," the list published at https://modern.az/az/news/138748 shows the places of work of people who received free apartments: Department of the National Academy of Sciences, International Center for Multiculturalism, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2 apartments), Presidential Administration Department (3 apartments), Department of the State Committee for Work with Diaspora, Press Council, Media Development Support Fund, Ataturk Center, one NGO, representative of the Russian TV channel Russia-24 (not Azerbaijani media!) and even LLC "House of Journalist. "

We have listed the workplaces of apartment recipients that are not subject to the conditions of the Media Development Support Fund. Another list of owners will appear after the commissioning of the third house of journalists. That is, we talk only about one, second house.

Samir Mustafayev, an adviser to the chair of the Media Support Fund of the Media, told Turan that according to the current rules, recipients of apartments in the second house have worked for at least 10 years in journalism, of which the last three years have been in the same media. To the remark that the list of apartments includes people who do not work in the media, he said that assessing a profession is the subjective opinion of everyone. When asked what relation an NGO worker has to journalism, he refused to answer, saying that he had no authority. According to him, the third house of journalists will be commissioned next July. Will a fourth house be built? Mustafayev does not know.

It should be noted that independent media initially opposed the provision of apartments to journalists by the state. This was due to a number of reasons:

1. The state destroyed the economic foundations of media independence, and ruined them. Thus, it buys their loyalty by apartments, legal and illegal subsidies.

2. The professional and ethical rules of the Azerbaijani journalist, adopted in 2003, prohibit journalists receiving such gifts from the state.

3. The state, thus, deprives the press of the right and obligation to exercise public control over all branches of government in the interests of society and the state, which has become one of the important factors in the systemic crisis in Azerbaijan, which started in 2015.

4. Such a policy has led to the degradation of media in Azerbaijan: a decline in the quality of the press, the destruction of a number of media, loss of audience, increased confrontation and hatred in the information space.