SEO Header Title

BAKU. May 7, 2013: Azerbaijan's parliament has approved a broad amnesty for around 9,000 inmates.

The amnesty proposal was put forward on May 7 by Azerbaijan's first lady Mehriban Aliyeva, who is also a parliamentary deputy.

Aliyeva said that the amnesty was inspired by the 90th birthday of the current President Ilham Aliyev's late father, Heydar Aliyev, which will be marked on May 10.

BERLIN. May 6, 2013: The Azerbaijani authorities should immediately stop its campaign of forced evictions and demolitions in the capital, Baku, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should also guarantee fair compensation to homeowners and residents, including those already evicted.

The controversial Winter Garden opens the week of May 6, 2013, in central Baku, where hundreds of residents were evicted to make way for the park, shops, and a parking lot. The authorities have planned a week of celebrations and events, including a speech by President Ilham Aliyev on May 10, marking the birthday of his late father, former President Heydar Aliyev.

BAKU. April 29, 2013: The newspaper Azadlig reports that on April 27, inspectors of the Ministry of Transportation attacked two journalists of the opposition Azadlig newspaper while the latter tried to video-record the inspectors muscling the taxi drivers. Inspectors of the Ministry of Transportation have previously been reported to have engaged in beating the taxi drivers who refused to pay the illegal monthly payments collected by the Ministry. It has been reported that it is a routine practice of the Ministry of Transportation to employ athletic looking persons to serve as inspectors to intimidate the taxi drivers to pay the illegal monthly payments several times the amount of the license fee they have to pay to be able to operate their taxis.

WASHINGTON. April 27, 2013: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reports persistent campaigns of intimidation against two of its Radio Azadliq journalists, Khadija Ismayilova and Yafez Hasanov, in retaliation for their reporting. The threats to these Azerbaijan Service reporters come days before a UN-mandated review of Azerbaijan's human rights performance and months ahead of presidential elections that President Ilham Aliyev has pledged will be free and fair.

BAKU. April 23, 2013: Jamil Guliyev, chief of "Culture" TV Channel became the president of the Public TV Channel (ITV), a major government controlled TV channel in Azerbaijan. The first media reports about Jamil Guliyev's expected appointment to the position of the president of ITV came up four days ago, together with the news about the dismissal of the Education Minister and his replacement with a younger and Western educated Mikayil Jabbarov. Today, Jamil Guliyev's appointment was formalized through a procedure of elections at the ITV Board, a fully controlled procedure at the Board which is fully controlled by the Azerbaijani government.

ITV's former president Ismayil Omarov stepped down by simply not forwarding his candidacy for re-elections. Interestingly, Ismayil Omarov poisoned his arrows by giving an "explanatory" statement about his decision not to re-run for the position at ITV. It was a common knowledge that Ismayil Omarov was pushed aside by the president Aliyev's team in an attempt to carry out a cosmetic reform in the government controlled TV Channel, but here is how Ismayil Omarov explained his decision to step down: "We are now integrated to Europe and ITV itself models itself after the European news structures...Since I already led ITV for two terms I thought it would be wrong for me to run for the third term, even though the ITV Charter allowed it." The twist here is that Ilham Aliyev, the Azerbaijani president who in essence fired Ismayil Omarov, arranged an entire referendum in 2009 in order to abolish the presidential term limits so that he could run for his third presidential term in October 2013.

BAKU. April 10, 2013: Prominent Azerbaijani human rights activist Leyla Yunus is awarded the Theodor Haecker prize established by a German city Esslingen am Neckar. City of Esslingen am Neckar established the memory of Theodor Haecker Award in 1995 to honor the legacy of Theodor Haecker, a prominent German writer, translator and cultural critic, who showed consistent opposition to nazism, for the last ten years of his life operating under the house arrest by the regime he criticized.

Turan News Agency reports that in the letter to Ms. Yunus, the organizers of the Theodor Haecker prize wrote: "Ms. Yunus will be awarded for her participation in the fight against corruption, lawlessness and human rights violations, for courageous contribution to the defense of political prisoners, as well as acting as head of the Institute for Peace and Democracy at risk to their own safety."

LANKARAN. April 10, 2013: Hundreds of workers building the Silk Road highway in Azerbaijan have held a protest near the southern city of Lankaran.

They say they have not been paid for the last four months.

The protesters demonstrated on April 10 at the headquarters of Qafqaz LTD Company, which manages the World-Bank-supported Silk Road Project Azerbaijan.

The workers later marched to Lankaran's city administration office to demand that their rights be respected.

BAKU. March 30, 2013:

BAKU. March 28, 2013: Based in Berlin, the consulting and publishing company OpenOil with the Azerbaijani news agency Turan launched the Azerbaijan Oil Wiki project today. This is a unit in Azerbaijani and English languages of the OpenOil Wiki website existing for several years.

The project covers the countries that produce oil and gas, and today has a section of 11 countries, of which Azerbaijan will be the 12^th.

The materials are available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and now also in Azerbaijani.

"Our goal is the dissemination of information about oil and gas industry, public education, and the desire to make government more accountable," said at the launch of the site at the Institute for Reporters Freedom and Safety the Coordinator of Open Oil Lucy Wallwork.

BAKU. March 25, 2013: Another conscript in the Azerbaijani Army has died.

Defense Ministry officials said that a sailor at a naval base in Baku was shot dead by another conscript.

The March 24 incident took place two weeks after police in Baku violently dispersed the latest protest against frequent noncombat deaths of conscripts in the army.