The independent media outlet Abzas Media wrote on Tuesday that the majority of its imprisoned staff, including editor-in-chief Sevinj Abbasova Vagifgizi and journalists Elnara Gasimova and Nargiz Absalamova, had begun a hunger strike to mark the 150th anniversary of Azerbaijan’s national press. At the same time, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev honored 200 representatives of pro-government media outlets.
The Abzas Media journalists’ hunger strike came in support of Ulvi Hasanli, another imprisoned journalist, who began his own hunger strike on Sunday.
Vagifgizi informed her family about the decision in a phone call from prison, stating that she, Nargiz Absalamova, and Elnara Gasimova would begin an indefinite hunger strike from Tuesday.
They additionally demanded that Hasanli be returned to the Baku pretrial detention centre — he was placed in solitary confinement on Monday after starting his hunger strike.
Aytan Farhadova
Awarded for ‘their silence’
In his decree on Tuesday, Aliyev stated that the pro-government media representatives were being honored ‘for their services in the development of the national press of Azerbaijan’.
In turn, residential aide Hikmet Hajiyev congratulated the pro-government media representatives on X, stating that Azerbaijani media ‘have gone beyond national borders’ and ‘serve as one of the most influential instruments of Azerbaijan’s soft power, in line with the country’s dynamic and modern foreign policy agenda’.
Hajiyev emphasised that journalism is ‘an honorable and very responsible profession’.
‘I sincerely congratulate each of you on this significant date and wish you further success in your work to implement the tasks set by the President for our media, strengthen our statehood and protect our national interests’, Hajiyev concluded.
Leyla Mustafayeva, an Azerbaijani journalist currently in exile in Germany, told OC Media that Aliyev awarded these people with honorary diplomas, orders, and medals not for their services in developing the national press, but ‘for their silence’ during the period of destruction of independent media, for their loyalty to the government, and for becoming state propagandists.
‘At best, they became press services of state institutions, publishing all incoming information without any questions, in short, presenting it the way the government wants to hear. Therefore, they cannot be called independent journalists’, Mustafayeva said.
‘They destroyed the independent and critical press of Azerbaijan in various ways and turned it into a slave of the government’, Mustafayeva emphasised, noting that ‘independent and critical journalists working in the country have been subject to mass arrests since late 2023’. She also suggested that if Hasan bay Zardabi, the founder of the first Azerbaijani-language newspaper, was alive today, ‘he too would be arrested and handcuffed’.
According to the 2025 Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, Azerbaijan is ranked 167th out of over 180 countries in terms of media freedom.
Aytan Farhadova
