azerireport.com - Silencing Dissent in Azerbaijan: Sexual Blackmail and Dreadful Blame Shift

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Interesting Read

Silencing Dissent in Azerbaijan: Sexual Blackmail and Dreadful Blame Shift

March 26, 2012

By Elmar Chakhtakhtinski

On March 7, the campaign against free speech in Azerbaijan reached a new low when Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter Khadija Ismayilova received a letter containing intimate photos of her. The photos were accompanied by a brief note threatening defamation if she “did not shut up.” After Ismayilova went public with the threat, an online video appeared depicting the female reporter having sex with her boyfriend shot by a hidden camera placed in her bedroom. The reaction of Azerbaijani authorities and pro-government circles to these events raises serious questions about their culpability and indicates a troubling trend of a cynical blame shift in attacks on journalists and dissidents.

Khadija Ismayilova is well known for her investigative work on high level corruption, including articles exposing secretive business fortunes of President Aliyev’s family. Some of those facts were vividly described in the recent CNBC documentary “Filthy Rich: Kleptocracy” that premiered on February 23. The documentary exposed the Aliyevs as corrupt rulers of an oil rich country of seven million people.

This is not the first time that Ismayilova has been subject to public criticism and attacks by the ruling regime. Articles in pro-government press have accused reporter of betraying her country and speculated about her Armenian ancestry (Azerbaijan has been locked in a bitter ethnic-territorial conflict with Armenia). According to Wikileaks reports, in 2009, President Ilham Aliyev personally complained about her to US diplomats. There are also precedents of sexual blackmail against other journalists. An opposition Azadliq newspaper editor’s sex video was broadcast on the Aliyev-owned Lider TV in 2010. Another journalist, Aqil Khalil, was accused by authorities of having had homosexual relations with the person who physically attacked him.

Naturally, many saw the latest sex blackmail as part of an orchestrated campaign by the government to silence the journalist. A kind of payback for her professional activities and a vivid illustration of the moral character and worldview of the regime's leaders: you expose our abuse of power and dirty money, we sneak into your bedroom and post a sex video of you. Justice served.

How many more home and hotel bedrooms in the country are wired and can anyone at all feel safe without their clothes on in Ilham Aliyev's Azerbaijan? These are some of the questions that both the locals and foreign guests might be asking, especially on the eve of the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest to be held in Baku in May this year.

But Ismayilova showed commendable courage, publicly holding the government responsible for the attacks and vowing to continue her investigative work. The events drew a firestorm of international criticism, with almost every major media advocacy and rights group calling on Azerbaijani government to investigate the incident and stop harassment of journalists. All sections of Azerbaijani society - from liberal democrats to atheists, and even religious conservatives – expressed support for Khadija.

One notable exception was the silence of authorities and the continuing anti-Ismayilova campaign by pro-government media. To add insult to the injury, few days after she received the threat letter, the ruling party’s official newspaper Yeni Azerbaijan published a character assassination article calling her a “frequent visitor of bars and clubs” known for her “affection to alcohol and fast-living”, and accused her of making fun of traditional Azerbaijani women. A day after the sex video appeared, a pro-government Sahil newspaper wrote that Ismayilova “attained the freedom she always wanted” and described details of intimate scenes from the video and how to find it on the web.

Only after seeing how the attacks backfired with the international and domestic outrage and the journalist’s own refusal to back-down, the head of Presidential Administration’s Information Department, Elnur Aslanov, issued a statement condemning the “invasion of private life”. As insincere and unconvincing this belated denunciation may sound, more troubling still is the shift of responsibility to “subversive forces, who try to violate stability in Azerbaijan, to damage international image of the country, to create tensions and confusion in the society”, as Mr. Aslanov put it. He did not name those “forces”, but an article in one of the biggest pro-government online news sites, news.az, speculated about pro-Iranian groups being behind the letter and video. The website issued a chilling warning saying that “those forces will not stop there”, thus hinting further, much graver repercussions for Ismayilova.

Such a warning eerily reminds past instances when those critical of government were murdered and the blame was put on religious extremists or external groups. In 1997, a prominent historian and parliament member Ziya Bunyadov, one of very few who dared to publicly challenge President Heydar Aliyev (father of the current president), was murdered at the entrance of his apartment. The official investigation placed the responsibility on an obscure Islamist group with no presence in Azerbaijan.

In 2005, Elmar Huseynov, perhaps the most vocal regime critic of the time, was shot to death in front of his apartment building. A citizen of neighboring Georgia was officially blamed for the killing and that person remains at large.

In November 2011, journalist Rafig Tagi was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant. Pro-Iranian forces were said to be the culprits. Just as in previous cases, no murderer has been caught or convicted so far. An increasing number of people wonder whether the real reason behind the murder was Tagi’s short-story “Tapdagıstan, Laplandia” which seemingly mocked President Ilham Aliyev and his dictatorial outlook.

The identity of murderers will not likely be known as long as Azerbaijan remains a corrupt authoritarian regime without an independent judiciary. But one thing seems to be certain: the world needs to keep a close watch as critics of the Aliyev regime face serious dangers to their lives and dignities.

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