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Terrorist State of Azerbaijan government seeks order to permanently block news websites

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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev

New York, April 28, 2017—The Azerbaijani government should immediately stop trying to permanently block access to five independent media outlets’ websites and should instead lift a decree that has rendered them currently inaccessible, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. A district court in the capital Baku yesterday began hearing a government lawsuit that seeks to compel internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to the sites, adjourning until May 1, according to media reports.

The lawsuit, filed by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Transport, Communications, and High Technology, asks the court to order ISPs to make permanent the censorship of the websites of the independent newspaper Azadliq, the Berlin-based, online news agency Meydan TV, the Azerbaijani service of the U.S.-government-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and online video channels Azerbaycan Saati and Turan TV, according to media reports.
Elchin Sadygov, a lawyer for Meydan TV, told CPJ that Azerbaijani ISPs have blocked access to the five websites since March 27 by decree of Minister of Transport, Communications, and High Technology Ramin Quluzade. The ministry’s lawsuit seeks to make that censorship permanent on the grounds that the websites threaten the national security of Azerbaijan, Sadygov said.
“If five news websites can threaten Azerbaijan’s national security, as the government claims, Azerbaijanis and the rest of the world should be deeply concerned by the country’s fragility,” CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. “The Azerbaijani government should immediately stop censoring these important sources of news and analysis, and should instead lift all restrictions on news in Azerbaijan.”
Sadygov told CPJ that a court ruling in favor of the government would set a “very dangerous precedent.”
“If the court rules in favor of the government’s demand—and that is very likely—it will allow the government to prosecute all independent journalists, saying they pose a threat to national security.”
RFE/RL President Thomas Kent called the ministry’s lawsuit an attempt at “blatant censorship.” According to the broadcaster, moves to block RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani website come after it published investigative reports about financial activities linked to members of President Ilham Aliyev’s family and inner circle. The broadcaster’s Baku bureau was forced to close in May 2015 following a December 2014 police raid. One of Azerbaijan’s leading investigative journalists, Khadija Ismayilova, who was also the station’s Baku bureau chief, was jailed from December 2014 through May 2016 for her critical reporting.

 

Can Dündar’s bilingual news platform ‘Özgürüz’ blocked in Turkey

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Turkey has reportedly banned access to the bilingual news website “Özgürüz,” which had only been launched earlier in the week. Editor-in-chief Can Dündar said, he had expected as much.

Editor-in-chief Can Dündar (pictured, far right) had indicated in an interview earlier in the week that he was anticipating Turkish authorities to block access to his new “Özgürüz” news platform, which publishes news from Turkey in both Turkish and German.

“The Turkish government will do anything to block us, to stop us. But I was in jail and wasn’t allowed to give interviews or publish articles then, and I still managed to. So if I managed to succeed in jail, I can do it now,” Dündar said on Tuesday, when the website was launched.

Published by “Correctiv,” an investigative non-profit organization, “Özgürüz,” which translates as “we are free,” was apparently blocked by Turkey’s official Information and Communications Technologies Authority (ICTA) overnight before even publishing its first story. ICTA referred to Turkish legislation enacted in 2007, designed to ban access to websites “suspected of inciting crimes.”

“Özgürüz” co-founder Hayko Bagdat (pictured above, far left), who, like Dündar, faces persecution in Turkey for his professional work as a journalist, tweeted a screeshot of the ICTA message displayed when attempts are made to access the site from within Turkey.

Crackdown on freedom

Can Dündar had risen to international attention in 2015 after being detained for many months in Turkey following allegations of “divulging state secrets” and “spying in aid of terrorist organizations.” As editor of the pro-Western “Cumhuriyet” newspaper, he had published a report on covert Turkish weapons exports to rebels in Syria, which allegedly were sponsored and conducted by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT).

After being released from pre-trial custody, Dündar decided to leave Turkey before being handed a six-year prison sentence in absentia. In Berlin, he started working on the launch of his new “Özgürüz” format to provide uncensored news about Turkey.

His colleague Hayko Bagdat has also been forced into self-exile in Germany, having written articles critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey jailed more journalists in 2016 than any other country, resulting in Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) branding Turkey as the worst country for media freedom. Around 150 journalists are presently incarcerated in the country; those on trial face charges including espionage and aiding and abetting terrorism. The clampdown on journalists is widely seen as an extension of the ongoing purge on dissidents in the wake of the July 15, 2016, failed coup in Turkey.

ss/kbm (epd, dpa)

Toronto reporter becomes Canada’s first hijab-clad news anchor

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A Toronto television journalist is believed to be Canada's first anchor to don a Muslim head scarf

A Toronto television journalist is believed to be Canada’s first anchor to don a Muslim head scarf

A Toronto television journalist is believed to be Canada’s first anchor to don a Muslim head scarf at one of the city’s major news broadcasters, the Associated Press reports.

Ginella Massa was asked to fill in on the anchor desk for CityNews’ 11 pm broadcast last week and created a buzz after the broadcast ended and she Tweeted, “That’s a wrap! Tonight wasn’t just important for me. I don’t think a woman in hijab has ever anchored a newscast in Canada.”
Massa, 29, said Friday that she became Canada’s first hijab-wearing television news reporter in 2015 while reporting for CTV News in Kitchener, Ontario, a city west of Toronto. She moved back to Toronto, where she grew up, earlier this year to take a reporting job at CityNews.
Massa recognized the personal career strides she had made after stepping out of the anchor desk, but she said it took her editor to point out the larger significance.
“It wasn’t until my editor said, ‘Hey, great job! Was that a first for Canada? A woman in a hijab?’ And I said yes. And so I tweeted about it. As much as I knew it was important, I didn’t expect the reaction that I received. My phone hasn’t stopped buzzing for the last week,” Massa told The Associated Press.
Massa’s achievement comes amid heightened concerns about anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and Europe. During the US presidential election campaign, Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out” what is going on.
“I’ve talked to many women who are journalists in the US. who work behind the scenes and they’ve told me that they face multiple challenges trying to get on air,” said Massa. “They’ve been told because of their hijab, that’s not going to happen. That makes me really sad because they’re being held back by someone else’s idea of what the public can or cannot handle.”
Although the reaction to Massa’s anchor stint and reporting role has been mostly positive in Canada, she said she has received a handful of negative comments and Tweets.
“But this is all the more reason in today’s climate to see positive images of Muslim women,” the journalist said. “They are a symbol of Islam when they wear the hijab and that carries a powerful image. It’s so important to see positive images of us in the media.”

Erdogan blocks Russia’s Sputnik news website

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n_97844_1Turkey’s Presidency of Telecommunication and Communication (TİB) has blocked access to Russia’s state news agency website Sputnik, without issuing prior notification, citing “legal consideration” of a law regarding crimes committed through online broadcasts.

“After technical analysis and legal consideration based on Law No. 5651, an administration measure has been taken for this website (sputniknews.com) according to decision No. 490.05.01.2016.-56092, dated 14/04/2016, of the Presidency of Telecommunication and Communication,” reads an error message that appears when users attempt to access the website from Turkey.

Sputnik Turkey editor-in-chief Mahir Boztepe announced the blockage on his Twitter account, adding that Turkish users were denied entry not only to the agency’s Turkish website but also to all its websites in 31 languages.

“Access blockage to Sputnik from TİB. No justification, many pretexts,” Boztepe tweeted, adding a message addressed to the Turkish media: “Do not fear, these days shall pass.”

No one was available for comment at Turkey’s telecoms and Internet regulatory agency, Reuters reported.

In a statement, Sputnik’s top editor, Margarita Simonyan, described the block as “a further act of harsh censorship” in Turkey and said the site had been blocked late on April 14, hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin made comments criticizing “some political leaders” in Turkey.

Turkey faced strong criticism from both the European Parliament and the U.S. State Department on April 15, after the former’s progress report and the latter’s annual human rights report slammed the country for a sharp deterioration in civil rights and liberties.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow have been tense since Nov. 24, 2015, when the former downed a Russian warplane on the Turkish border with Syria, citing an airspace violation. Turkey claims that it warned the Russian aircraft multiple times before shooting it down, while Russia denies any warnings reaching its side.

Following the jet downing, Putin imposed sanctions on Turkey and trade between the two countries has plummeted.

USC News A hub of Armenian history makes its mark

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pxbenziuy6zvqzpdz72q-824x549Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Institute of Armenian Studies raises awareness of culture and contemporary issues on campus and beyond
Growing up in an Armenian community in Wisconsin, Richard Antaramian began wondering about his family’s history.

The answers he received didn’t adequately address his curiosity.

“It pushed me into more rigorous areas of inquiry, and ultimately I came out with a Ph.D. and a lifelong desire both to teach and research the rich history of the Armenian people,” said Antaramian, assistant professor of history and holder of the Turpanjian Early Career Chair in Contemporary Armenian Studies at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

He currently teaches two undergraduate courses on the Ottomans and World War I. In the spring he’ll teach a class on the Armenian diaspora.

Antaramian’s faculty position was established this year in conjunction with the 10-year anniversary of USC Dornsife’s Institute of Armenian Studies and a commitment from faculty, staff and administrators university-wide to create a preeminent program for Armenian studies at USC.

“We have thousands of students who are not Armenian who also can learn from our scholars’ incredible wealth of knowledge”

“Exploring Armenia in such depth offers a wonderful opportunity for our students,” said Steve Kay, dean of USC Dornsife, at an anniversary gala that raised nearly $2 million to support research, education and outreach. “At any given time, USC has almost 1,000 Armenian students on our campus. But, thinking bigger, we have thousands of students who are not Armenian who also can learn from our scholars’ incredible wealth of knowledge.”

The IAS was established in 2005 as part of a partnership between USC and the Armenian community to structure a multidisciplinary center of learning. The fall gala paid tribute to USC President C. L. Max Nikias, a staunch supporter since the institute’s inception.

“President Nikias advocated for us 10 years ago, and we are grateful that he continues to believe that, in scholarship, there are no insignificant fields,” said Charles Ghailian, chair of the IAS Leadership Council. “Going forward, the institute will be a more visible, active organization that initiates research, collaborates with other global centers of Armenian studies and engages with various areas of study on campus.”
Ambitious aims

Newly appointed IAS Director Salpi Ghazarian ’75 — who earned her bachelor’s from USC Dornsife in history and social science — has ambitious goals for the institute’s growth, including hosting cultural events and lectures, and bringing Armenian political figures to campus for discussions with faculty and students. Ghazarian will build on the foundation laid by Richard Dekmejian, who has directed the institute for the past decade.

She also hopes to foster an environment of expanded research and publication, delving into such issues as the Armenian diaspora and the Armenian Genocide.

“I am so pleased to be able to come back to USC to participate in expanding the field of Armenian studies so that it both contributes to and benefits from this incredibly broad scholarly community,” said Ghazarian, who previously founded and directed The Civilitas Foundation, a civic organization and advocacy group that empowers its employees to make decisions about and raise awareness of Armenian issues through the Internet, research and public programming.

Earlier this year, the Armenian Film Foundation officially gave J. Michael Hagopian’s collection of 400 digitized interviews of Armenian Genocide survivors and witnesses to the Visual History Archive at the USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education.

Richard Hovannisian, adjunct professor of history, was appointed to take the lead on advising the USC Shoah Foundation on integrating these testimonies into the archive of 53,000 interviews from the Holocaust and other genocides.

Ghazarian plans to work with the USC Shoah Foundation to develop lesson plans based on these testimonies.

“There is no aspect of our existence that was not impacted by the Armenian Genocide,” Ghazarian said.
As history unfolds

Antaramian’s research focuses on the role of the Armenian Church under Ottoman governance during the 19th century. At USC, he will expand his dissertation, “In Subversive Service of the Sublime State: Tanzimat, Consolidating Jurisdiction and Armenian Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1844-1896” into a book.

“We are typically told that there was an antagonistic relationship between Armenians and the Ottoman governance — but that’s not the case,” Antaramian said. “My research shows that the Armenian Church itself became a site of politics in the Ottoman Empire.”

Antaramian appreciates having the opportunity to research and teach in Los Angeles, which has a diverse Armenian community from Turkey, Syria, Iran and many other countries of the diaspora.

“To me, diaspora signifies all the communities throughout the world who share common experience and institutional connections,” Antaramian said. “If a student wanted to do oral interviews with someone for a project or paper, he or she could do it right here.”

He also believes that the depth of the Armenian diaspora in Los Angeles will attract graduate students and visiting scholars to USC Dornsife.

Antaramian and Ghazarian will work together to encourage scholarship and raise awareness of Armenian issues — past and present.

“This is a new era of scholarship, a new broad interdisciplinary world of study — generally in the 21st century, certainly at USC, and now with Armenian studies at USC Dornsife,” Ghazarian said. “Going forward, we will make the institute’s presence permeate into many other disciplines, offering a unique opportunity both for students and professors to get a deeper understanding of what it means to be Armenian.”

Turkey: Two British editors quit AA, calling it Erdoğan’s propaganda machine

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9 April 2014, Wednesday /ANKARA, TODAY’S ZAMAN

aakemalTwo British journalists who used to work as editors at the Anadolu Agency’s (AA) English news service have left their jobs, saying they do not want to work at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “propaganda mouthpiece.”

In the article “We Quit Working for Erdogan’s Propaganda Mouthpiece” published on the UK site of Vice international magazine on Tuesday, journalists Kate O’Sullivan and Laura Benitez said, “We joined the agency in January, supposedly to edit English-language news, but quickly found ourselves becoming English-language spin doctors.”

The two applied for the job at Anadolu after seeing an ad in the Guardian daily.

“The AA’s editorial line on domestic politics — and Syria — was so intently pro-government that we might as well have been writing press releases,” it was stated in the article.

O’Sullivan and Benitez also criticized Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç for downplaying the number of imprisoned journalists in Turkey at an event at London’s Chatham House. The two journalists later had the opportunity to visit London on business and resigned as soon as they arrived in the UK.

The journalists said the Anadolu Agency was once a point of national pride, but today “it’s at the end of one of the many sets of strings in the ruling [Justice and Development Party] AK Party’s puppet parade.” They said most of Turkey’s TV stations are heavily influenced by the state and the “few opposition channels can expect to have their licenses revoked at any time or be banned from broadcasting key events, such as live election footage or anything that might detract from how fantastic the government are.”

“Much of Turkey’s English-language news came via Today’s Zaman, the largest English-language newspaper in Turkey,” the article said. “Written in good, accessible English, and featuring Western humour and Istanbul-minded opinions, Today’s Zaman provided international eyes with a window into Turkey’s domestic affairs,” it added.

Anadolu Agency Director General Kemal Öztürk, the former press adviser to Erdoğan, is described in the article as a “government cabinet wannabe.” With exclusive access to ministers, the agency could report about domestic affairs as soon as events in the ruling party unfolded, O’Sullivan and Benitez said, adding: “Sources, often the most difficult part of a reporter’s job, were also a breeze: ‘The Foreign Minister told me, so yes it’s true’ — no second source-checks needed. The domestic news editing policy was, essentially: don’t ask questions. Ever.”

According to article, the agency has a more relaxed approach on foreign affairs and correspondents were free to report on events from anywhere they wanted, with a few guidelines to consider.

“A good example of the domestic editorial policy in action came the morning after tapes were leaked in which you can allegedly hear Erdogan and his son discussing how to dispose of a ‘significant’ amount of money. Translators [in Anadolu] went into panic mode to get the real story out to the English-speaking world — that, of course, the tapes had been fabricated.

While the Zaman media group has been working to portray Erdoğan as a “corrupt dictator, hell bent on control and oppression,” the article said, the pro-government media is “just as tirelessly working to paint a picture of a shadowy ‘parallel state’ that is working beneath the surface to twist the minds and thoughts of the vulnerable Turkish public.”

The article quoted Erdoğan as saying “We will get in their cave to catch them,” in reference to the members of the parallel state.

“It is this polarisation of the press that leaves a tightly-squeezed no-man’s land of moderate news sources ripe for accusations of misconduct and terrorism. Patriotism is ingrained in Turkey’s cultural psychology; Turkey has, in many ways, defined itself by its ability to self-protect,” the article said, adding the threat of outside or “foreign” control has been a part of the country’s consciousness since the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923.

Iranian Foreign Minister: Right of peoples to self-determination should be respected

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The vital right of peoples to self-determination should be respected, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi stated during the ministerial meeting of D-8 Economic Cooperation Organization in Pakistan, Iranian Foreign Ministry’s official website said.

The Iranian FM, slamming the use of dual standards towards human rights in many countries, said, in part, “Democracy does not belong to some country or region and therefore the right of peoples to self-determination and their right to master their own fate is of vital importance. All efforts, which are aimed at overthrowing the order established by peoples on the basis of Constitution and democracy, should be rejected.”

The D-8 comprises Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and Nigeria.

The modern phase of the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) conflict broke out in 1988, when, as a response to the peaceful demand for self-determination of the people of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), annexed to Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921, the Azerbaijani authorities carried out ethnic cleansing of Armenians – at first in the big cities of Azerbaijan, and then in Artsakh.
In September 1991 Artsakh declared independence, and, as a result, Azerbaijan exacerbated the violences and started large-scale military actions against Artsakh. After number of defeats on the frontlines, in May 1994 Azerbaijan was forced ask for a cease-fire from the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic).

Currently, the negotiations on the settlement of the conflict are being conducted under the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs (Russia, USA and France), based on the Madrid proposals, presented in November 2007.