Azeri journalist receives death threats for working in Armenian paper

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijan-born journalist and blogger Arzu Geybullayeva has been receiving death threats for working in Istanbul-based Armenian newspaper Agos, Global Journalist reports.

Geybullayeva has previously written for major news outlets like Foreign Policy and al-Jazeera. Yet it’s her work for Agos that has led to threats from her native land.

Criticism over her work for Agos began with small Azeri outlets, and spread to Azerbaijan’s state-owned media. Eventually Geybullayeva, who frequently blogs about human rights in Azerbaijan, started to receive death threats online. By 2014 she realized it was no longer safe for her to return to her home country.

That year the Azeri government of President Ilham Aliyev unleashed a crackdown on the media. Among other incidents, the government arrested Khadija Ismayilova, an Azeri journalist who investigated corruption in Aliyev’s family. Ilgar Nasibov, a journalist and human rights activist, was beaten unconscious in what his wife told local media an attack by Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry.

The Azeri government has pressured Geybullayeva’s family in Azerbaijan, a strategy it has used against other journalists and dissidents.