Khadija Ismay­ilo­va is not only Azerbaijan’s most famous jour­nal­ist, but the country’s most famous woman. Her loud and per­sis­tent inves­ti­ga­tions of corrupt dealings in the country, and her pub­li­ca­tions, in which she names president Ilham Aliyev, members of his family, and other high-ranking officials in con­nec­tion to those dealings, have not endeared her to the author­i­ties.

An entire campaign was waged to discredit Ismay­ilo­va with the goal of, she supposes, forcing her to quit her inves­ti­ga­tions. When this didn’t stop her, the criminal pro­ceed­ings began.

She was detained in December, 2014. In September, 2015, the Court of Grave Crimes in Baku found the jour­nal­ist guilty and sentenced her to 7.5 years in prison for tax evasion and embez­zle­ment.

An unprece­dent­ed number of inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions and Western gov­ern­ments accused the Ismay­ilo­va case of being polit­i­cal­ly motivated, and called upon the Azer­bai­jani gov­ern­ment to free her. Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al and other organ­i­sa­tions launched a massive campaign in support of Ismay­ilo­va. And on just 25 May 2016, the High Court of Azer­bai­jan changed her sentence from 7.5 years of impris­on­ment to con­di­tion­al impris­on­ment. Yet Azer­bai­jani prisons still contain political prisoners. The human rights situation in this South Caucasian country is cause for acute concern. Human rights activists and jour­nal­ists have long been sounding the alarm.

Khadija Ismay­ilo­va talked to us about her work and her situation.

In September of 2015 the courts found you guilty of embez­zle­ment and tax evasion and sentenced you to 7.5 years of impris­on­ment. Why do you think such a case was brought against you?

All of my inves­ti­ga­tions were dedicated to this topic — the embez­zle­ment committed by officials, to the ways they open offshore companies to avoid paying in-country taxes, or to hide their stolen earnings. I think that’s why they chose these par­tic­u­lar accu­sa­tions. They delib­er­at­ed for a long time. After all, first they accused me of dis­clos­ing state secrets. Then they realised they’d screwed up with that idea. Then they began pro­ceed­ings on charges of libel, but that case too was clearly pulled out of thin air, and the jail time would have been minimal. Then they accused me of pushing someone to suicide. The unsuc­cess­ful suicide later confessed that employees of the Ministry of National Security and the city prosecutor’s office forced him to slander me. I was orig­i­nal­ly arrested under this pretext, which was only later recon­fig­ured into a financial charge.

Did you antic­i­pate that the court’s verdict would truly lead to an actual prison sentence?

At the time of the verdict’s announce­ment I had already been in jail for nine months, in pretrial detention. Neither the impris­on­ment nor the verdict were a surprise to me. I had been awaiting my arrest a long time — the only question was how they would spin the tale. They ‘spun’ it quite poorly.

What, in your opinion, caused them to adjust the severity of your pun­ish­ment, less than a year after your impris­on­ment?

The campaign which demanded my release was very effective. My col­leagues came together and conducted inves­ti­ga­tions on my behalf, which I could not conduct from prison. Inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tions were very active. But most effective, I think, was the call to relieve the first lady from her post as UNESCO ambas­sador, since I was under arrest for inves­ti­gat­ing the companies and holdings of her family — the Azer­bai­jani president’s family. And our first family doesn't like to lose their regalia.

If you had the oppor­tu­ni­ty, would you leave the country?

No. Unequiv­o­cal­ly not. I lived for half a year in the USA, when I worked on the radio programme Voice of America in 2006. And I dis­cov­ered that, despite the ease of everyday life, it was hard to be happy when my country was deep in shit. I tore up the contract ahead of time and returned home. After­wards there were many offers to leave. I always refused. Even before my arrest, while I was out of the country on a routine trip, I was warned that upon my return I would be arrested. Nev­er­the­less, I of course returned. I don’t just inves­ti­gate — I also instruct my young col­leagues in inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. Do you think I have the right to involve them in a risky business, if I myself flee? And then, to live with the knowledge that I ran away — it doesn’t matter what we call it, it’s still running away — would be much harder than life among all these problems.

How many human rights activists, jour­nal­ists, activists, remain behind bars in this country? And are they all opponents of the current gov­ern­ment?

I belong to a group that compiles the list of political prisoners. We have doc­u­ment­ed and confirmed 119 cases. Among them are 6 jour­nal­ists and bloggers, two poets, five youth activists, and one human rights defender. The list also contains many religious activists, and hostages — meaning, relatives of politi­cians and jour­nal­ists arrested by the gov­ern­ment to put pressure upon their opponents.

How would you char­ac­terise the socio-political situation in Azer­bai­jan today: the state of civil society, and mass media in general, in both its official and inde­pen­dent forms?

Fear — this is the word that best char­ac­teris­es the situation in the country. Everyone lives in fear of losing their job, their freedom, the well-being of their family. Everyone lives under suspicion. Even sanc­tioned meetings are accom­pa­nied by arrests and repres­sions. There isn’t a single inde­pen­dent tele­vi­sion or radio station, not a single inde­pen­dent or oppo­si­tion­al newspaper. There is only the internet. Civil society is forced into a state of ille­gal­i­ty; the attempt to implement any inde­pen­dent ini­tia­tive can be brought under the aegis of the Criminal Code. Our situation is likely familiar to you, as our author­i­ties copy their oppres­sive laws from the Russian framework.

And yet we try to remain on our feet. We speak and we work. It’s pleasant to realise that our ranks are expanding. There is a whole galaxy of young col­leagues, eager to study inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. A new gen­er­a­tion of human rights activists has also emerged. Unde­ni­ably, we struggle, but we survive.

The article is a trans­la­tion of a partner post written by Denis Abdul­layev that first appeared in the journal Dosh. Trans­lat­ed by Alek­san­dra Burshteyn.

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