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The People Behind Bars in Azerbaijan, And How They Got There
BY OCCRP
The numbers alone are appalling: nearly 100 political prisoners. Dozens of attacks on journalists, stretching back nearly 15 years.
Spurred by the high-profile arrest of investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova last December, her colleagues in Azerbaijan and the United States began to wonder about the people behind those numbers.
Who were they? What, exactly, had happened to them?
Over a period of months, two groups working in two very different countries pieced together a mosaic of data to show how the government of Azerbaijan has systematically moved to curtail the rights of its own citizens.
The Khadija Project is proud of the results, released today: a comprehensive and interactive timeline showing key steps the government took to crush journalistic freedoms, from 1999 to the present. It is paired with an interactive archive of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners, compiled by www.jumpstart.ge and www.meydan.tv.
The two databases overlap, as the government of Azerbaijan increasingly moves to silence independent journalists with prison terms.
Ismayilova anticipated her arrest and called on journalists to continue her investigative work. Though barred from leaving her country to speak as a witness before the U.S. Helsinki Commission in November 2014, Ismayilova submitted written testimony detailing the Azerbaijani government’s efforts to silence independent journalists whose work has exposed the corrupt practices of the ruling elite.
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