This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: As we broadcast from the U.N. climate summit here in Baku, Azerbaijan, we continue to look at the brutal crackdown on human rights activists, government critics and the press. In the months ahead of hosting COP29, the Azerbaijani government arrested a number of independent journalists, including three women journalists with the outlet Abzas Media, who said they were assaulted earlier this month at a Baku jail while awaiting trial. Since November of last year, at least six journalists with Abzas have been arrested.
For more, we’re going to Berlin, where we’re joined by Leyla Mustafayeva, acting editor-in-chief of Abzas Media. The online news site has been working out of Berlin due to the crackdown here in Azerbaijan.
Leyla, thank you for joining us. You can see that the deputy foreign minister was not willing to talk about the crackdown here. But talk about first what have happened to the women journalists — well, all six journalists of Abzas in this lead-up to the COP.
LEYLA MUSTAFAYEVA: Thank you for having me on the program.
So, actually, the total crackdown on Azerbaijani media started recently, last year in November. Our news organization, Abzas Media, was targeted massively, and six of our journalists, including director Ulvi Hasanli; Sevinj Vagifgizi, editor-in-chief; and two brave journalists, Nargiz Absalamova and Elnara Gasimova; also the project manager, Mahammad Kekalov; and including the investigative journalist Hafiz Babali was detained on fabricated charges. These journalists are accused in smuggling foreign currency into the country. And they are facing right now from eight to 12 years’ imprisonment, because in late August this year, the investigator has aggravated the case and added seven more criminal charges against the journalists.
And they are still in jail since one year, just detained one year ahead of COP, and facing harassment and death threats in jail, as well. Just a few months ago, our director, Ulvi Hasanli, was threatened with death just for making the torture cases public from the prison where he is kept. And also our three brave female journalists — Sevinj Vagifgizi, Nargiz Absalamova and also Elnara Gasimova — have faced violence just a few days ahead of COP in a prison which is just kilometers away from the COP venue.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m asking you, Leyla, about the decision to host the COP29 here. Abzas also conducted investigations looking at who in the Azerbaijani government has benefited from hosting the COP here in Baku.
LEYLA MUSTAFAYEVA: Yes, they did. Actually, our journalists have been detained for these corruption investigations that they were doing on those here. It was the only media outlet carrying out systematic corruption investigations in the country. But for now, it was not just to intervene to jail these journalists ahead of COP, because they were going to ask critical questions, those state officials who is attending in COP29 conference in Baku, including Yalchin Rafiyev, deputy foreign minister, who is lead negotiator of COP29 from Azerbaijan. In one of our investigations, we found out that Yalchin Rafiyev’s brother has lucratively won the tenders related to reconstruction in Karabakh, despite the fact that the company has violated — had violated the environmental regulations. But it could be just one of the questions that our journalists could ask, if they would be in freedom and could attend in COP29 conference, as well.
But in general, this is an event that Azerbaijani authorities are greenwashing their image, because this is a conference — this is a country which the export of the country heavily relies on fossil fuels, namely gas and oil. And additionally, it was a good opportunity for Azerbaijani authorities just to have a lot of fossil fuel lobbyists in order to have a lot of contracts focused on oil exportation.
AMY GOODMAN: We only have a few minutes, and I want to quickly ask you about the women at your news organization. Three of them have said that they were brutalized in pretrial detention in a Baku jail. Can you explain what happened, who they were?
LEYLA MUSTAFAYEVA: Just a few days ago, they were oppressed by the prison guardians due to this instruction coming from the prison governor. They just wanted to have fresh air in the cells where they are kept. They just stretched their hands out of the prison — small prison door window in order to make sure that the door is not closed and all the women who have health problems in jail with them to have fresh air. So, you know, the kind of topics related to air pollution or environmental issues are discussed in COP29 conference, but our journalists, they can’t just mail or receive a fresh air in the prison.
AMY GOODMAN: Leyla, in my last question to you, in June of 2023, Abzas journalists were arrested for investigating the Gedabek gold mine in western Azerbaijan. A consortium of reporters led by Forbidden Stories later continued their investigation, which found that gold from Azerbaijan is brought to Europe and sold to tech giants like Apple, Tesla and Microsoft. This is a clip.
NARRATOR: In June 2023, protests in Azerbaijan were violently crushed. Journalists capturing and publishing footage of these events were arrested, imprisoned, and even threatened with rape. A few months later, Abzas Media journalists who had covered these demonstrations were arrested again. To this day, they are still detained. In the meantime, Forbidden Stories took over their investigations to tell the stories they could no longer pursue. This investigation has led us to some of the biggest names in tech and banking.
LAURENT RICHARD: We’re talking about Microsoft, Tesla and other giants of the tech or the industry. I’m not sure they are aware about what’s going on in the mine where they are buying the gold through the refinery.
AMY GOODMAN: Another person mentioned in this Forbidden Stories documentary is John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire, the father of the current governor, Chris Sununu. John Sununu also served as President George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff. He’s one of the shareholders in Anglo Asian Mining, AAM, a gold-mining company in Azerbaijan. What did Abzas Media discover about the work of this mining company, in this last 60 seconds we have?
LEYLA MUSTAFAYEVA: One of our journalists, Nargiz Absalamova, was covering the protest which broke out related to gold mining and construction of cyanide lake in this village, which is actually put under police control currently. The Abzas Media covered this protest and was going also to hold an independent water and soil test in order to see whether this complaint coming from the residents is true or not. But they were jailed, unfortunately, and they couldn’t just carry out independent tests in order to find out whether the soil and air was polluted with cyanide or not. They are just jailed. And it was one of the purposes just to silence the journalists to prevent them from doing further investigations related to this gold mine in western province in Azerbaijan.
AMY GOODMAN: Leyla Mustafayeva, thank you so much for being with us, acting editor-in-chief of the award-winning Azerbaijani independent media outlet Abzas Media. The online news site has been working from outside Azerbaijan since six of its journalists were arrested and imprisoned in the lead-up to this climate summit. Leyla was speaking to us from Berlin, Germany.
Coming up, Donald Trump has picked the former head of World Wrestling Entertainment to be secretary of education and Dr. Mehmet Oz to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He is a backer of privatizing Medicare. Back in 20 seconds.
