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Azerbaijan



AZERBAIJAN: BAKU MOVING TO RESTRICT ONLINE FREE SPEECH?

Shahin Abbasov May 25, 2011

Officials in Azerbaijan want to make the act of spreading “misinformation” a
“cyber-crime.” Some Azerbaijani civil rights activists worry that the initiative
is driven by a desire to restrict Azerbaijani web users’ access to online
information.

The government, which already has tagged Skype and Wikipedia as potential
threats to national security, maintains that the proposed changes to
Azerbaijan’s Criminal Code are meant only to reinforce the country’s electronic
security. Under amendments proposed by the Ministry of National Security,
attacks on computer networks and websites, online copyright violations, virus
attacks, online money-laundering, theft of funds from e-payment systems, and the
dissemination of “misinformation” and false terrorist threats would be
considered criminal offenses.

Parliament is expected to discuss the amendments in the fall. The draft
legislation defines “misinformation” as the “distribution of disinformation with
the aim of spreading panic among the population, false information about
terror.” While shying away from providing concrete examples of online
“misinformation,” one senior national security ministry official cited the
user-edited reference site Wikipedia as an example of the alleged dangers of
incorrect online information.

At a May 4 conference in Baku on “Cyber and National Security,” one Ministry of
National Security department chief, Kerim Kerimov, charged that Wikipedia
disseminates “false and biased information which discredits Azerbaijan.” Noting
that removing such information is “difficult” under Wikipedia’s user-based
editing system, he urged the international community to pay greater attention to
the site.

But Wikipedia is not the only target of official jabs. On May 3, Communications
and Information Technology Minister Ali Abbasov [no relation to this reporter]
named Skype as another threat to Azerbaijani security. Abbasov did not
elaborate, and, on May 4, backtracked, telling journalists that he did not mean
for the government “to close down or restrict users’ access to any website or
computer system.”

The technical director of one local IT company, who did not want to be named,
wondered if Abbasov’s comments were somehow connected to a decrease in revenues
for Aztelecom, the state-run telephone company. The company’s revenues have
dipped as Azerbaijanis increasingly turn to Skype for cheaper phone calls.

Other local observers scoff at the government’s expressed concerns about
Wikipedia and Skype. But a prominent media lawyer cautioned that the
government’s effort to address “misinformation” could be used to restrict online
freedom of speech.

"[W]e know that authorities are concerned with youth activity on social
networks. So far, such activists [who used Facebook to spread information about
anti-government rallies] have been detained or pressured, using other charges
like drug possession,” said Alasgar Mammadli, a board member of the Azerbaijan
Internet Forum, a non-governmental Internet-regulation watchdog. “But, in the
future, new charges of ‘disinformation’ could potentially be used to intimidate
bloggers, online journalists and social network users.”

Adnan Hajizade, one of the two video bloggers imprisoned in Azerbaijan in 2009
and released late in 2010 following an international outcry over his case,
agreed that the misinformation amendment could potentially be used to restrict
online freedom of speech. He does not believe, however, that the government
would actually use it in that fashion, when there are other tools available.
“[I]t would be a flagrant violation of freedom of speech, cause loud
international protests, and would lead to [complainants] winning a case at the
European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg,” Hajizade said.

“It is easier to arrest and intimidate bloggers the authorities do not like
based on other articles of the Criminal Code -- hooliganism, drug possession,
evasion of military service -- like they’ve done so far,” he added.

Emin Huseynov, director of the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety,
expressed concern that the proposed amendments could encourage “censorship and
self-censorship” He cited the 2007 arrest of newspaper editor Eynulla Fatullayev
as a precedent: one of the charges against Fatullayev was the “dissemination of
panic.”

Huseynov worried that the government would use the broadest possible
interpretation of what constitutes “misinformation.”

“For example, the government could consider calls to have a rally or an
anti-government protest on Facebook as sparking panic,” he contended.

Pro-government parliamentarian Zahid Oruj, a member of the parliamentary
Committee for Security and Defense, denied that the amendments would be used to
crackdown on free speech. “It is not true. The amendments are to fight
cyber-crimes and to meet the respective international conventions Azerbaijan has
ratified,” Oruj asserted.

Some journalists, Elnur Baimov, editor-in-chief of the News.az and Gun.az news
portals, defend the government’s initiative. “This issue is poorly regulated in
Azerbaijan still and we have a legal vacuum here,” Baimov said. “My web portals
were attacked by both local and foreign hackers several times and there weren’t
any legal tools for their protection.”

Discouraging such attacks may be a legitimate policy goal, but it should not
serve as cover for government interference in routine Internet use, argued
Azerbaijan Internet Forum’s Mammadli. “Currently, the Internet is not regulated
by the government in Azerbaijan, and it should be kept this way,” he said.

Shahin Abbasov is a freelance reporter based in Baku and a board member of the
Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation – Azerbaijan.



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