The health of Abzas Media’s imprisoned staff deteriorates as hunger strike enters second week
Since starting his hunger strike eight days ago, Azerbaijani independent media outlet Abzas Media’s director Ulvi Hasanli has lost seven kilograms. Three other Abzas Media journalists have gone on hunger strike in solidarity with Hasanli and have been denied drinking water — reportedly as punishment by the prison authorities.
Hasanli began his hunger strike on 20 July after he failed to be transferred to a Baku pre-trial detention centre despite a court decision — instead, he was placed in a stricter regime facility in Umbaki, a small village in the Baku suburbs.
According to Hasanli’s wife, Rubaba Guliyeva, Hasanli has been in solitary confinement since 21 July. While there, he suffered a medical incident which left him unconscious.
‘The solitary cell was so stuffy and unbearably hot that Ulvi suffocated from lack of air and lost consciousness. He does not know how many hours he was unconscious. He says that when he woke up, it was already dark. The guard came to the room only 12 hours after the incident’, Guliyeva wrote on Facebook on 26 July.
Following this incident, Hasanli was examined by a prison doctor. However, though Hasanli told the doctor he had been having heart problems, the doctor responded that it was ‘impossible’ to conduct an electrocardiogram as the prison administration had not given their permission for such a test.
In her Facebook post, Guliyeva stressed that Hasanli was not only being held in a solitary cell, but was also prohibited to open a window in the cell.
‘He believes that he is being punished for the news about his health, and that the window is being deliberately closed’.
Guliyeva stated that on Friday, representatives of the penitentiary service ‘formally held a meeting’ to check the conditions of Hasanli’s detention, but in the end, ‘no one paid attention to Ulvi’s words’.
‘The Human Rights Defender’s Office, as usual, plays the role of the “three monkeys”’, she said, referring to the three monkeys who ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’.
Three Abzas Media journalists on hunger strike in solidarity
On 25 July, Abzas Media reported that their staff imprisoned in the women’s centre — namely editor-in-chief, Sevinj Abbasova Vagifgizi and journalists Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova — have been unable to access drinking water after joining Hasanli’s hunger strike in solidarity.
https://oc-media.org/abzas-media-journalists-go-on-a-hunger-strike-on-azerbaijans-media-day/
‘They are given water for half an hour in the morning and evening. During this time, 153 women cannot wash themselves, wash dirty dishes, or fill empty water containers’, the journalists told Abzas Media.
The journalists noted that on the evening of 25 July, no hot water was available and it was only after the prisoners knocked on the cell doors demanding water that cold water was given for 15 minutes.
‘More than 350 prisoners on the third floor were tortured. The prisoners could not find even a handful of water to wash their hands and faces’, the journalists said, adding that ‘[the prison authorities] complain that they are not given water in the building because we have started a hunger strike. In this way, they are trying to turn the prisoners against us’.
The journalists added that ‘we know that these injustices against us are happening with the permission of [Azerbaijani President] Ilham Aliyev, and we will hold him accountable for everything bad that happens to us’.
On Monday, RFE/RL reported that, according to Vagifgizi’s family, during a meeting on Saturday, the prison administration did not allow them to bring clothes and hygiene products.
‘They only allowed water. Sevinj does not have clean clothes’, the family members told RFE/RL.
In June, the court sentenced Hasanli, Vagifgizi, and investigative journalist Hafiz Babali to nine years in prison on charges of smuggling foreign currency as a group and money laundering as part of the case against Abzas Media. Journalists Absalamova and Gasimova were sentenced to eight years, and Mahammad Kekalov, a coordinator at Abzas Media, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. Farid Mehralizada, a journalist at RFE/RL, was also sentenced to nine years.
On Monday evening, Abzas Media posted on Facebook that Vagifgizi, Absalamova, and Gasimova were ending their hunger strikes out of concern for the health of their parents.‘Each of our parents has cardiovascular disease. We ask Ulvi to end his hunger strike out of concern for the health of his mother Esvira, who has a heart condition’, the journalists wrote.
Previously, during a meeting with his family on Sunday, Hasanli stated that he would not end his hunger strike.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that Abzas Media editor-in-chief Sevinj Abbasova Vagifgizi and journalists Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova have ended their hunger strike.
Aytan Farhadova
