The authorities in Azerbaijan appear to have blocked OC Media’s website, with the site remaining inaccessible throughout the country.
OC Media first learnt from readers that they could not reach the website in early June, just as Azerbaijan launched a new National Cybersecurity Agency (NCA) with far-reaching powers of information control.
All attempts to load the website across several regions of the country have since failed except when using a VPN, including from Azerbaijani servers. Traffic from Azerbaijan also dropped to the low double digits.
Despite this, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Digital Development and Transport insisted that there was no problem accessing the site and that no restrictions had been imposed.
Robin Fabbro, OC Media’s editor-in-chief, said the move had long been expected ‘given that the Azerbaijani authorities continue to grow even more intolerant of any information that does not follow the official line’.
‘While this is a blow for us, as since our founding in 2017 we have reached a small but stable readership in Azerbaijan, we are confident our readers, who are likely well accustomed to using VPNs and other means to circumvent censorship, will still be able to access our coverage’.
‘That the Azerbaijani government considers our reporting dangerous just goes to show the power that journalists still have to hold power to account’, he continued, ‘and also underlines the importance of supporting independent journalism’.
On 2 June, Azerbaijan’s presidential website published a decree abolishing the Electronic Security Service — a roughly 30-person body that was created in 2013 and had operated under the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport — and replacing it with the NCA. The new agency will have total control over internet monitoring and censorship, which critics warn is a central danger to freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Azerbaijan’s assault on independent media continues
Yalchin Imanov, a prominent Azerbaijani human rights lawyer, said the government had been restricting access to the websites of independent media since at least 2017.
Between 2017–2019, the authorities regularly blocked access to a variety of international and local media outlets — including RFE/RL, Meydan TV, the Azadlig newspaper, Azerbaijan Saati, Turan TV, and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) — citing their involvement in various criminal cases.
Azerbaijan also blocked access to the websites of independent media outlets Abzas Media and Toplum TV during a more recent wave of repression that began in November 2023. Around 30 journalists working for a number of media outlets, including Abzas Media, Meydan TV, Toplum TV, and RFE/RL are either in pre-trial detention or are serving lengthy tax evasion sentences as a result.
Meydan TV’s editor-in-chief Sevda Samadova, now operating in exile, told OC Media that they only learned about the block on their website from Azerbaijani pro-government media.
Later, however, the block was formalised by the Sabail District Court, which claimed that Meydan TV had ‘broadcast materials aimed at violently changing the country’s constitutional structure, calling for destructive actions, and promoting radical religious groups’. Similar reasoning was used in other court decisions regarding the blocking of websites, though critics have long accused the government of being vague in their definition of ‘information prohibited by the government’.
According to Samodova, since the court ruling, the mirrored websites they have created are also blocked from time to time, and that their social media pages ‘have been repeatedly attacked’.
Azerbaijani media expert Arzu Geybulla told OC Media that there is no independent mechanism that exists that can monitor ‘these kinds of decisions that are often imposed by the authorities’.
She added that authorities ‘make it compulsory for providers to block access, regardless of the website’ which could be ‘any other website tomorrow’.
‘It’s a simple act of URL blocking from within the country, which prevents access to your website with the original URL. There is a VPN service acting as sort of the middle actor providing access’, Geybulla said, adding that ‘in a nutshell, when you have a country where the infrastructure is monopolised and there are back doors to state institutions that control access to information on all fronts, this isn’t a very difficult measure to take or an act to commit’.
She also stated that while previous decisions to block local media outlets were publicised, she would not ‘rule out the fact that quietly there’s been a decision to block access to OC Media’.
‘Maybe [the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport] will come up with an answer or a statement in a few days, in a few weeks, maybe they’ll come up with a statement tomorrow, but because there is no one holding them to account, they do not feel that they are accountable to or responsible for issuing statements or providing you with an explanation’, Geybulla noted.
‘When the state has full and total control over what is being shared and is made available to the people, it’s very easy not to provide any explanation because there are no checks and balances’.
Published by OC-Media