The Azerbaijani Government “continued to use defamation and other criminal charges to intimidate and punish journalists and bloggers expressing dissenting opinions” on the incumbent authorities, says an annual report prepared by the Human Rights Watch.

“A February 2009 referendum on constitutional amendments abolished presidential term limits, which many local and international observers believed will make it possible for President Ilham Aliyev to remain in office indefinitely,” the report says.

Since November 2008 at least nine independent or pro-opposition journalists and editors were convicted on criminal libel or defamation charges.

The report also mentions “youth activists and bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade [who] were physically attacked, apparently unprovoked, in a Baku restaurant.”

Other imprisoned journalists include Eynulla Fatullayev, an outspoken government critic and editor-in-chief of two newspapers, who was convicted of fomenting terrorism and other criminal charges in 2007 and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years for his writings; Ganimed Zahidov, editor-in-chief of the opposition daily Azadlig, who was convicted in March 2008 on questionable hooliganism charges and sentenced to four years in prison; and Mushfig Huseynov, opposition daily Bizim Yol correspondent, who is serving a five-year term handed down in January 2008 (to be followed by a two-year publishing ban), on questionable extortion charges.

In December 2008 the National Television and Radio Council banned the transmission of foreign radio stations via FM frequencies, making them accessible only through satellite receiver or the internet. The February 2009 constitutional amendments ban the audio recording, filming, or photographing of a person without his or her consent, seriously hampering investigative journalism in Azerbaijan. March amendments to the mass media law allow the government to request a court to suspend a media outlet for up to two months for several reasons, including failure to send free obligatory copies to “relevant government bodies.”

In June the government introduced, but then withdrew, a draft law on NGOs that would have imposed extensive restrictions on the founding and operation of civil society groups.

Torture and ill-treatment in custody continue to be a widespread problem and occur with impunity. The Azerbaijan Committee against Torture, an independent group that monitors penitentiary institutions, received over 90 complaints alleging torture and ill-treatment in custody. In each case where law enforcement agencies responded to the complaint, they denied that torture or ill-treatment had taken place. At least three prisoners are reported to have died in custody in 2009 after allegedly being ill-treated.

In April the European Court of Human Rights found Azerbaijan in violation of article 3 (the prohibition against inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to Mahira Muradova, a participant in opposition protests following the October 2003 presidential election. Muradova alleged that she had been subjected to an act of police brutality and that the authorities failed to carry out an adequate investigation into the incident.

T.P.