A year ago this month Khadija Ismayilova, an award-winning Azerbaijani journalist, was arrested on a string of charges, including libel, tax evasion and illegal business activity.
In September, she was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years’ in prison at a closed trial. Human rights groups condemned both her conviction and the sentence, accusing the Azerbaijan authorities of fabricating the charges.
Ismayilova, who worked with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has been named as a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International.
Now Sport for Rights - a coalition of international press freedom groups - has called for the release of Ismayilova along with other journalists and rights activists held in Azerbaijan’s jails.
The coalition, which includes the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Index on Censorship and the PEN American Center, has issued a statement calling on the Azerbaijani authorities to end their crackdown on the press.
It highlights the unprecedented repression in Azerbaijan, which has been ruled by President Ilham Aliyev since 2003, having inherited the position from his father, who was president from 1993.
“Ismayilova’s arrest a year ago signalled an escalation of repression in Azerbaijan”, said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, director of free expression programmes at PEN American Center.
“Independent voices are being silenced at an unprecedented rate, and we urge the authorities to cease the legal and extra-legal harassment of journalists and media outlets immediately”.
Sport for Rights believes the charges against Ismayilova to be politically motivated and connected to her work as an investigative journalist. She was responsible for exposing corruption among the Aliyev family.
“Ismayilova’s imprisonment is emblematic of the Azerbaijani authorities’ repression of independent journalists and human rights defenders”, said Melody Patry of Index on Censorship.
“Every day Ismayilova and the other political prisoners spend in jail is another reminder to the world that the Azerbaijani government fails to respect and protect the democratic principles and fundamental rights it has committed to upholding”.
To commemorate the anniversary of Ismayilova’s arrest, her colleagues have released new stories as part of “the Khadija project”, which reveal corruption among Azerbaijan’s elite, as this example, posted by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), illustrates.
Sources: CPJ/The Guardian/Facebook/OCCRP
