Azerbaijan: As protests loom, Facebook is monitored

Recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have highlighted the potential use of online social networks for activism, but they have also added weight to existing personal and security concerns, writes Onnik Krikorian, the Caucasus regional editor for Global Voices Online.

Krikorian recalls that in a recent interview with Radio Free Europe, for example, Evgeny Morozov even argued that internal security agencies might actually welcome the use of Facebook precisely because whole networks can be revealed and monitored.

“It's also an issue of increasing concern given the gradual use Facebook to encourage and maintain contacts between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the absence of traditional forms of communication blocked off as a result of the still unresolved conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh,” writes Krikorian.

“True, as a tool for online peace building, Facebook has proven its worth, but some activists in Azerbaijan have already expressed concern at how connections with contacts and friends in Armenia might be used against them,” Krikorian writes, adding that a German journalist, after having visited Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, said that “if pictures of Azerbaijanis together with Armenians are found on the internet, then they will have to go to the KGB and be questioned”.

“It's also not the first time that ‘warnings' have been voiced by officials alleging that social network sites allow ‘hostile forces to use different Internet services against us’.”

“Indeed, fears of the Internet among the authorities in Baku have been growing in recent years, with two video blogging youth activists, Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, detained in July 2009 and imprisoned until November last year when international pressure led to their early conditional release. Few buy the government line that they were jailed for ‘hooliganism,' of course, instead considering the action against them intended to prevent and frustrate their online activism. Amnesty International, for example, declared the two men to be prisoners of conscience and the government remains on edge about the potential for social media to foment unrest after uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.

“Certainly, even if Facebook penetration remains low at just 3.91 percent (324,800), the authorities are taking no chances. On 5 February, for example, Jabbar Savalan, a 20-year-old activist from the opposition Popular Front, was arrested in Sumgait, a city in Azerbaijan. Charged with narcotics possession, something his supporters and lawyer strongly deny, Savalan is instead believed to have been detained due to comments he made on Facebook calling for Egypt-style protests in the country a day earlier. Amnesty International have also denounced the charges, calling them a “pretext to punish Jabbar Savalan for his political activism and to discourage other youth activists from exercising their right to freedom of expression."

Further, he mentinoes that a few days later, on 9 February, another Popular Front activist, Elchin Hasanov, was also reportedly summoned to police and instructed to remove messages on his Facebook page calling for action in Savalan's support.

"In that context, the publication a few days ago of an article identifying prominent activists and journalists in Azerbaijan with Armenian friends and colleagues on Facebook such as LGBT activist Mamikon Hovsepyan and peacebuilder Georgi Vanyan has concerned many. Translated into English, it might read as fairly neutral, but the original Azerbaijani is considered by native Azerbaijani speakers to be quite critical, portraying those named as “enemies of the State,” writes Krikorian.
 
Read the whole article here.