Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

Statoil reduces staff in Azerbaijan

SEPT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Norwegian oil and gas company, Statoil, is reducing its staff at its office in Azerbaijan, an anonymous employee was quoted as saying. “From 40 employees, the company now has around 10,” the source told the Azeri Press Agency. In 2014, Statoil sold its 15.5% share in the offshore gas field Shah Deniz and its pipeline assets to Malaysian Petronas.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)

Investigative journalist sent to jail in Azerbaijan

SEPT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Baku sentenced investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova to 7-1/2 years in prison for various financial crimes, triggering heavy criticism from the West of Azerbaijan’s human rights record and commitment to free speech.

Ismayilova joins a growing list of human rights activists, journalists and opposition supporters who have been sent to prison by the authorities in Azerbaijan over the past few years.

Opponents of President Ilham Aliyev have accused him of effectively purging Azerbaijan of dissidents.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch said: “The outrageous verdict against Khadija Ismayilova shows the Azerbaijani authorities’ willingness to subvert the law to exact revenge against critics.”

This opinion was backed up by other human rights and media agencies as well as the EU, the British government and the United States.

Azerbaijan retorts that the West is trying to organise a coup.

Ismayilova was jailed for tax evasion, embezzlement and abuse of power, almost an exact mirror of the type of wrong-doings she has investigated in various government agencies, and even the presidential family, over the past few years.

Mr Roth of Human Rights Watch said independent observers had been unable to access the courtroom because pro-government supporters had taken all the seating.

“The government gets away with things like this because Azerbaijan has paid no price for throwing one dissident, one human rights activists after another into prison,” he said.

Part of the dilemma for Europe is that it wants to reduce its gas dependency on Russia. This means finding an alternative source of gas and this source of gas is Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani government appears to have gambled that Europe won’t stop building pipelines and negotiating gas contracts despite grumbling about its crackdown on dissidents.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)

Azerbaijan jails journalist Khadija Ismayilova

SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Azerbaijan jailed journalist Khadija Ismayilova for various financial crimes. Her supporters have said that the charges were fabricated and that this is just another attempt by the authorities to silence one of their most fierce critics. Although the authorities in Azerbaijan have imprisoned dozens of human rights activists, opposition members and journalists, Ismayilova is the most high profile.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)

Comment: Growing dissent crack down in Azerbaijan

SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has disgraced itself, yet again, in the eyes of the West by locking up for 7-1⁄2 years, journalist Khadija Ismayilova.

Perhaps it is about of paranoia triggered by the Arab Spring of 2011 or perhaps it’s the whispering from Russia to clamp down on dissenters, but over the last few years the authorities in Azerbaijan have developed an unfortunate habit of jailing dissidents on various financial and drug-running charges.

Although Ismayilova and other dissenters may now sit in jail, it is the authorities in Azerbaijan who look foolish.

It’s impossible to take seriously all the charges thrown at the dissenters over the past few years. There have been too many of them, from similar backgrounds, facing similar charges.

Instead, the intrigue is just what has spooked President Ilham Aliyev and the authorities in Azerbaijan? Why does the country feel so insecure?

And there is also the worrying precedent that has been set. Last month a sports journalist was attacked and killed after criticising an international Azerbaijani footballer on Facebook. Journalists in Azerbaijan, it seems, who challenge the establishment are in great peril.

This is important for investors looking at Azerbaijan from a business viewpoint. There comes a tipping point when it becomes just too negative for a company or persons to invest in a country. The reputational damage outweighs any potential profit.

If it hasn’t done so already, Azerbaijan may fast be approaching this point.

By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin

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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)

Gas flow restarts on Azerbaijani pipeline

SEPT. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Gas flows along the Baku-Tbilisi-Er- zurum pipeline have resumed after a second attack by Kurdish rebels, the head of BP-Azerbaijan’s press service Tamam Bayatli told Azerbaijani media.

Kurdish rebels have twice attacked a section of the pipeline in Turkey over the past month. On each occasion, BP said gas flows had barely been impacted as the pipeline had either been empty or running at reduced capacity for maintenance.

The PKK group has claimed responsibility for the two attacks and said that it will mount more despite a pledged by the Turkish security forces to strengthen security.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline, sometimes referred to as the South Caucasus pipeline, is an important part of the network pumping gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe. Its main feeder is Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz project which is being enlarged to produce more gas for Europe.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)

OSCE to send monitors to Azerbaijan

SEPT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The OSCE, Europe’s democracy and civil rights watchdog, said it was going to send 30 long-term and 350 short-term observers to monitor Azerbaijan’s parliamentary election set for Nov. 1. Relations between Europe and Azerbaijan are at a low. Europe has accused Azerbaijan of cracking down on human rights; Azerbaijan has accused the West of trying to organise a coup.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)

Police clash with protesters in Azerbaijan

AUG. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Riot police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of dozens of young men in the provincial Azerbaijani town of Mingachevir, a rare display of public anger and frustration in Azerbaijan. The crowd had been calling for the head of the local police force to resign after a 22-year-old Azerbaijani man died in police custody two days earlier.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)

UN members criticise Azerbaijan

AUG. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Six members of the UN’s Human Rights Council said that a trial that sentenced human rights defenders Leyla and Arif Yunus to jail for 8-1/2 and 7 years for various financial crimes, was politically motivated. Their intervention was just the latest in a series of criticism of the authorities in Azerbaijan by Western rights groups.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 244, published on Aug. 21 2015)

Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan plan TV station

AUG. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a meeting in Astana, information ministers from Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan agreed to set up a news channel which will promote a so-called Turkic view of the world. These countries, and especially Azerbaijan, have become frustrated with what they view as biased coverage in Western media.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 244, published on Aug. 21 2015)

Russia builds radar in Azerbaijan

AUG. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia will build a new radar system in Azerbaijan, its ministry of defence said in a TV broadcast, underlining just how links between the two countries have developed. It will replace a radar station at Qabala that Russia had leased from Azerbaijan. In 2012 Azerbaijan declined to sign a lease extension on the radar at Qabala to Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 244, published on Aug. 21 2015)