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CPJ Condemns Persecution Of Azerbaijani Human Rights Activist Gulnar

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  • CPJ Condemns Persecution Of Azerbaijani Human Rights Activist Gulnar

    CPJ CONDEMNS PERSECUTION OF AZERBAIJANI HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST GULNARA AKHUNDOVA

    18:42 07/11/2014 " REGION

    The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the harassment by
    Azerbaijani officials of the family of Gulnara Akhundova, a regional
    expert with the Denmark-based press freedom group International Media
    Support (IMS). Akhundova's 67-year-old mother was interrogated on
    Wednesday by prosecutors in Baku who raided her apartment the same
    day, according to local. The statement is published in the site of
    the organization.

    According to the statement, Akhundova, who lives in Copenhagen, told
    CPJ by Skype, that prosecutors telephoned her mother, Dzhavakhir
    Akhundova, and asked her to come to their office in Baku for
    questioning. Authorities did not send an official summons.

    Prosecutors asked her mother about Akhundova's human rights work,
    and made her sign an agreement not to disclose the information to
    the public, Akhundova told CPJ. After the interrogation, authorities
    searched Akhundova's apartment. Although the authorities did not
    confiscate anything, Akhundova's mother and her eight-year-old daughter
    were traumatized by the experience.

    "Azerbaijan authorities hit a new low in harassing the family of a
    government critic. We urge the government to halt its crackdown on
    journalists and civil society, and to engage in constructive dialogue
    with its critics rather than trying to intimidate them into silence,
    " said Muzaffar Suleymanov, CPJ's Europe and Central Asia researcher.

    Akhundova told CPJ she believes her family are being harassed because
    of her work and a critical statement on human rights and press freedom
    abuses in Azerbaijan that she made last week before the human rights
    commission with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in
    Madrid. Authorities told her mother the raid was part of a wider case
    they were investigating against a group of local and international
    non-governmental organizations, including IMS.

    After Akhundova delivered her statement, Rafael Huseynov, an
    Azerbaijani representative on the Council, publicly called her a
    traitor and a spy, reports said.

    According to the statement, in the past year, Azerbaijan, the
    current chair of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of
    Europe--the largest pan-European human rights body--has unleashed
    an unprecedented campaign of repression against critical journalists
    and rights activists, CPJ research shows. More than a dozen reporters
    and rights activists are currently held in Azerbaijani jails.

    http://www.panorama.am/en/politics/2014/11/07/azerbaijan-akhundova/

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