Media logo

COVID-19

271 Posts
0 Followers
Illustration: Tamar Shvelidze/OC Media
Azerbaijan

Opinion | Four years of entrapment: why Azerbaijan’s land borders remain closed

J

Four years since the coronavirus pandemic began, Azerbaijan’s land borders remain closed to all civilian traffic. While officially this is to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, a number of theories exist regarding the real reason behind the measure.  In the spring of 2020, Azerbaijan followed the example of many other countries, closing its land borders to prevent the transmission of the coronavirus, alongside a host of other preventive measures. Later the same year, the Second Nagorno-Kar

The border checkpoint between Azerbaijan’s Gazakh region and Georgia. Islam Shikhali/OC Media.
Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan extends ‘COVID-19’ border closure until April

I

Azerbaijan has extended the closure of its land borders to ‘prevent the spread of COVID-19’ until April, despite dropping most COVID-related restrictions, including air travel. Azerbaijan has been extending the closure of its borders since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020.  The country has since dropped all other anti-pandemic measures, including the use of facemasks and vaccination certificates, and has allowed Azerbaijanis and foreign nationals to enter the country by air without PCR

The border checkpoint between Azerbaijan’s Gazakh region and Georgia. Islam Shikhali/OC Media.
Azerbaijan

Azerbaijani Georgians appeal to Aliyev to open border 

Avatar

Over a thousand people, mostly Georgian ethnic Azerbaijanis, have signed an online petition calling on Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev to restore at least limited movement across the Georgian-Azerbaijani land border.  The petition was launched by Samira Bayramova, a civil activist based in Marneuli, southern Georgia.  Georgia’s population of ethnic Azerbaijanis numbers more than 230,000, constituting the largest (6%) ethnic minority group in Georgia, most living in the southeast of the

The border checkpoint between Azerbaijan’s Gazakh region and Georgia. Islam Shikhali/OC Media.
Azerbaijan

Three years since the COVID outbreak, Azerbaijanis still cannot cross their border

I

Three years after Azerbaijan closed its land borders in response to the coronavirus pandemic, those borders remain closed. But what did their closure mean for Azerbaijan’s people and government? Shahin Valiyev’s final years in life were marked by displacement, fear over the COVID-19 pandemic, and an inability to return home to Azerbaijan. Shortly after the pandemic made headlines around the world in 2020, Azerbaijan closed its land borders. Many Azerbaijanis studying or working in neighbou

Four Azerbaijani students who were killed in the earthquake in Turkey. Image via Azertag.
2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake

Azerbaijanis killed in Turkey quake ‘could have survived if border was open’

I

An Azerbaijani studying in Turkey has claimed that four other students who died in the Turkey–Syria earthquake would have been at home in Azerbaijan when the quake struck, had the country’s land borders not still been closed ‘due to COVID-19’. In a post on Facebook on Wednesday, Ibrahim Ibrahimov, a student at the Malatya Inonu University, blamed both the ongoing border closure and the ‘outragous’ prices of the country’s national carrier for their deaths. On 14 February, the bodies of Nazarz

Editor‘s Picks