Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009europe and central asia: belaruson YouTube in June may have been a particular trigger for reprisal. The videocriticized the country’s importation of donkeys, supposedly at high prices. Thesketch depicted a fictional press conference at which Hajizade, wearing a donkeysuit, talked to a group of Azerbaijani “journalists.”In an Orwellian scenario, Milli and Hajizade were taken into custody afterthey went to a police station to report an assault. The pair had been debatingpolitics with friends at a Baku restaurant when two unidentified men interruptedthe conversation and started a brawl, local press reports said. By the time thebloggers arrived at the police station, the two assailants had supposedly filed acomplaint and officers had already decided what to do. Without investigating,police charged Milli and Hajizade with “hooliganism” and “inflicting minor bodilyharm,” the Azerbaijani press reported. On November 11, a Sabail District Courtjudge pronounced the bloggers guilty, sentencing Milli to two and a half years injail and Hajizade to two years.CPJ decried the case as entrapment and noted that the circumstances werestrikingly similar to the 2007 jailing of Genimet Zakhidov, editor of Azadlyg.Zakhidov was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison for “hooliganism”and “inflicting minor bodily harm” after a pair of strangers accosted him on aBaku street, then supposedly filed a police complaint claiming they had beenthe victims. In September, a Baku judge denied an appeal for a lighter sentencebecause Zakhidov had been reprimanded in prison for not joining a volleyballgame, IRFS reported.In November, CPJ honored one imprisoned journalist whose case was emblematicof the government’s efforts to silence its critics. Eynulla Fatullayev, arecipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, was imprisoned in April2007 on a series of fabricated charges, including terrorism and defamation. Fatullayev,editor of the now-closed independent Russian-language weekly RealnyAzerbaijan and the Azeri-language daily Gündalik Azarbaycan, was jailed in retaliationfor his investigation into the 2005 murder of his former boss and mentor,Elmar Huseynov. Fatullayev had alleged an official cover-up in the case.Reporting from or about the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic—a westernexclave that borders Armenia, Iran, and Turkey—remained Azerbaijan’s mostdangerous assignment. Only a handful of reporters worked in the territory, andthey faced intimidation and harassment from local security agents. In February2009, Idrak Abbasov, a reporter with the Baku-based independent newspaperZerkalo and a researcher with IRFS, traveled to Nakhchivan to study local pressfreedom conditions. Agents with the Nakhchivan Ministry of National Security(MNB) blindfolded him, took his identity papers, camera, notebook, andcell phone, and interrogated him for hours about his trip. An unidentified agentdemanded that Abbasov reveal the names of his colleagues in the region, cursedat him, and accused him of being a spy for Armenia, the journalist told CPJ afterhis detention. Before releasing him, officers deleted images from his camera andordered him to leave Nakhchivan immediately.Abbasov told CPJ that agents had lured him to an MNB station on the pretextthat they would answer questions. He said the mistreatment left him withstress-induced heart problems that required several days of hospitalization.BELARUSAuthorities eased their heavy-handed tactics of repressionfor much of the year even as a restrictive new media law took effect. The changein tone coincided with the European Union’s suspension of a three-year-oldtravel ban against President Aleksandr Lukashenko and 35 top officials thatwas first imposed in response to the regime’s treatment of opposition activistsand journalists.But journalists debunked the notion of any significant, sustained improvementin the press freedom climate. The government continued to barindependent newspapers from using state-controlled distribution companies,police harassed independent and pro-opposition reporters, and regulatorsdenied accreditation to foreign news outlets and their reporters. Andby late year, the government began to apply the provisions of its new medialaw more aggressively. The law, which was passed in 2008 and took effectin February 2009, required all media to obtain new government registration,complicated the accreditation process for reporters, toughened sanctionsagainst news outlets to include closure and suspensions, barred internationalfinancing of domestic media, and applied longstanding restrictions on traditionalmedia to online publications. Lukashenko had signed the measure over the objectionsof domestic and internationalmedia advocates.t o p developments»»Restrictive law requires media obtaingovernment registration.»»Administration eases some repressivetactics to gain EU favor.1 3key statisticIndependent papers blacklisted bystate-controlled distributors.Journalists encounteredsurprisingly few obstacles inthe first few months underthe new law, CPJ researchshowed. The InformationMinistry created a simpleprocess for media to apply fornew registration, Aleksei Korol,editor of the independentweekly Novy Chas, told CPJ.170171