In 2013 Azerbaijan held another presidential elections won again by Ilham Aliyev. The pre- and post- election time saw several important events concerning freedom of expression. Although, internet in general remained free and access to internet was expanding across the country, printed media faced several obstacles in terms of lawsuits charging press outlets, particularly opposition newspapers, excessive fines which they could hardly pay off. Furthermore, new regulations restricting selling of newspapers in certain parts of the city negatively affected their incomes (Freedom House, Nations in Transit, Azerbaijan 2014). Opposition newspaper “Azadliq” temporarily stopped printing as its bank assets were frozen due to pending fines (Azadliq Radiosu 2013). The process on the law on defamation which was the main demand from the government voiced year by year in the EU reports as well as by OSCE and CoE officials was activated in 2013. However, the Venice Commission disapproved the draft bill prepared by Azerbaijani parliamentarians, as it did not include decriminalisation of libel and insult. Therefore, adoption of the law was postponed (APA 2013b). On the contrary, Parliament passed new amendments to the Criminal Code which extended criminal prosecution of defaming and insulting statements to online publications made via internet (APA 2013c). Azerbaijani Parliament responded to European Parliament’s resolution condemning human rights violation and calling for immediate release of political activist Ilgar Mammadov, by accepting counter-resolution that refuted European Parliament’s stance as unfair and unacceptable (APA 2013d). None of the investigations of attacks and campaigns against journalists in previous years made progress in 2013. This was one of the major demands of the European Union from Azerbaijani leadership (Implementation of the European Neighbourhood Policy in Azerbaijan Progress in 2013 and recommendations for action: 4).
Nevertheless, EU and Azerbaijani officials expressed their visions of the relations in a round of bilateral meetings held throughout the year. In June Ilham Aliyev met with Barroso in Brussels. But according to post-meeting statements energy issues occupied majority of the bilateral agenda during the discussions. Barroso started his speech with successful expansion of energy cooperation, particularly in consideration of Southern Gas Corridor that could provide 10% of European demand: “Azerbaijan is a very important partner for us – we have achieved a reliable partnership in the energy field. … I wish to thank President Aliyev for his strong and continued commitment“(Barroso 2013). To the end of his speech Barroso noted: “Ensuring human rights and fundamental freedoms stand high in our agenda“(Barroso 2013). But to what extent this issue had been discussed remained unclear as Barroso’s further narrative did not specify what particularly was touched and if the latest developments regarding freedom of expression had been emphasized. President Aliyev underlined potential of energy cooperation envisioning 2 trillion cubic meters gas reserves of the country and called for more active engagement in Nagorno-Karabakh problem (APA 2013e). Therefore, freedom of expression as well as other normative principles underpinning Eastern Partnership were, at large, overshadowed by more practical goals and interests. However, normative domain have been more consistently outspoken by Stefan Füle. Giving a speech in Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy Füle mentioned problematic areas of relations referring to those underlined in progress report – electoral process, human rights and fundamental freedoms (Stefan Füle 2013a). In conclusion of his visit to Baku which coincided with World Press Freedom Day, Stefan Füle reitaraited the importance that EU devotes to its principles and shared values: “But besides energy, what is very important to us is respect for human rights and democratic principles. The values agenda forms a crucial part of our partnership. … And on this day of World Press Freedom let me underline how important is freedom of media and freedom of expression for the democracy.”(Stefan Füle 2013b). But in respect to Azerbaijan such values were laid out in rather soft context in order to maintain the balance between values and interests.
6.7 Findings
Our main goal in this chapter is to find the answer to the following question:
Does the European Union invoke normative impact on the freedom of expression in Azerbaijan?
Developments chronicled via process tracing have confirmed that by every year since 2009 freedom of expression in Azerbaijan have been gradually deteriorating. Action Plan accepted in 2006 as the main instruction for bilateral relations did not explicitly outline this matter on the agenda. However, the EU was following the events and reacting respectively in progress reports so that freedom of expression has been one of its major concerns in Azerbaijan since 2009, after the launch of the Eastern partnership. The EU acted quite promptly to negative changes in Azerbaijan. Among all the cases analysed in the chapter, only in one of them the EU did not react either via progress documents or by official statements44. This fact confirms the attachment of the European Union to normative standpoint in bilateral relations.
Having confirmed that the European Union was acting in line with normative visions and rationale, with an enforced confidence in the relevance of our case study we can proceed to finding answer to our primary research question. In order to answer this question we need to consider carefully all the developments. First of all, the EU had high expectations from Azerbaijani government to take necessary steps for decriminalization of defamation. As we have seen from the year by year analysis, defamation was the major pretext used by authorities to silence the media. The demand to adopt defamation law has been consistently mentioned in the implementation documents, although during official meetings this demand was not expressed by the EU officials. OSCE and CoE acted more resolutely in this regard.45 Nevertheless, even combined efforts of international organizations have not succeeded so far. Hence, this example indicates failure of the EU, albeit the involvement of other organizations may somewhat soften the responsibility of the EU in this failure.
Apart from that, throughout 2009-2013 we have traced numerous cases of intimidations of journalists. RafiqTagi was murdered in 2011, Seymour Khaziyev and Ramin Deko in 2011 and Idrak Abbasov in 2012 were assaulted while Khadija Ismayilova was blackmailed in 2012. All of them worked for either opposition or independent media outlets. Authorities failed to bring perpetrators to justice in all abovementioned cases. The death of Rafiq Tagi was condemned only by the European Parliament’s resolution. Assaults on Seymour Khaziyev and Ramin Deko were mentioned only in the implementation document for 2011 and yet without naming the cases and victims individually. On the other hand, neither Barroso nor Van Rompuy raised these issues in their meetings with Ilham Aliyev in Baku in the same year, confining their messages to a mere remark of fundamental freedoms and rights. By the same token, intimidation of an investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova was condemned solely by the European Parliament’s resolution and anxiously voiced by Stefan Füle in general terms. Van Rompuy, however, avoided touching upon these issues in his Baku visit. While Ilham Aliyev unequivocally admitted that his government ignores critical resolutions of the European Parliament, the EU lacked alternative channels of imposing normative pressure on the government. Therefore, this case represents another failure of the EU, mainly caused by incoherent activities of the EU institutions and top level officials when normative agenda concerned.
We can also classify into a separate group the cases of journalist imprisonment. This group represents somewhat mixed and partly successful example of the EU involvement. Eynulla Fatullayev, Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade were sentenced to imprisonment. In the case of two bloggers we have seen immediate involvement of the EU via statements from the office of the Union’s Presidency, resolution of the European Parliament as well as Ashton’s ad hoc statement on the issue. In Fatullayev’s case we had ECtHR ruling, the EU Presidency’s reaction and the European Parliament’s resolution. Consequently, all 3 journalists and bloggers were pardoned and released, even though after serving significant part of their imprisonment term. But it should be also noted that in both cases we have seen more resolute involvement of the US State Department, CoE, OSCE and namely its Representatives on Freedom of the Media as well as bold engagement of NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, Freedom House, which had extensively contributed to make the cases universally advertised and to keep them on the agenda. Therefore, these immense contributions from third actors fairly weaken the eventual role of the EU in this partly successful example of imposing normative impact.
All in all, relying on these 3 examples as well as other episodic cases that we have described in process tracing, we can conclude that the answer to our research question posed in the beginning - Does the European Union invoke normative impact on the freedom of expression in Azerbaijan?- is negative. Chronologically described events covering 2009-2013 reveal that the EU was acting with normative visions. However, in terms of tangible normative influence the EU failed to provide us with a clearly traceable causal connection with positive developments in the media environment of Azerbaijan.
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