Khadija Ismayilova recommends
Today, in Tbilisi, a capital of Georgia, has started 13 Southern Caucasian Media Conference of the OSCE, where participate the journalists and representatives of state structures of the three south-Caucasian states – Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. The topic of the conference is “Variety of challenges to freedom of mass media and freedom of opinion expression”.
During the first session in topic “Reliability and security of offline and online” the reporters from international and Azerbaijani public organisations harshly criticized the authorities of Azerbaijan.
A chairman of the Baku press-club Arif Aliyev noted an importance of the problem of criminal liability for defamation, being noted that unlike Armenia and Georgia, Azerbaijan has not yet decriminalized a defamation, though the last years has announced moratorium and no one journalists has not sentenced in prison on this accusation. “Authorities of Azerbaijan are against decriminalization of defamation, considering that in this case, citizens in order to protect their dignity will start resorting to the help of a fist” – Aliyev said.
Director of “Turan” Agency Mehman Aliyev noted: “Number of the cases of violence in Azerbaijan has reduced since there are no independent journalists who might be beaten. Authorities have bought everybody”.
Director of the Institute for Freedom and Safety of journalists Emin Huseynov stated that Azerbaijani civil society in Azerbaijan is paralyzed. He informed that currently the five journalists detained, and many bloggers arrested for their records in social networks. Huseynov is persona non-grata for Azerbaijani powers; therefore he had to leave the country.
Being detained under the home arrest, the journalist Khadija Ismayilova could not participate in Tbilisi Conference of the OSCE. She took part via Skype. Ismayilova told about daily deteriorating situation in an area of freedom of speech and mass media. She gave samples the facts how political figures and diplomats were deprived freedom for critical notes addressing the authorities in the social networks, and those who approved these notes in the networks were found and interrogated.
Khadija once again noted that in Azerbaijan there are threatened for expression of an opinion, deprived freedom, interfered in privacy. She pointed out an importance of the fact that the journalists are saying about these threatens and persecution because the authorities are not only threatened, but they want that there is nothing told about it.
“We must speak as much as possible about it, not taking attention to threats and propaganda. It is not shame to speak; it is shame to betray the repressions to silence. We, journalists, must be together. If the authorities do not want us to conduct investigation, then we have to do it as much as possible”, – Khadija Ismayilova noted. Addressing to the Azerbaijani authorities, the journalist said: “” If you do not want that we would write about money you stolen, then just do not steal. If you do not like your reflection in a mirror, do change yourselves”.
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