INGLORIOUS REPORTERS

A lie may take many different forms. Some lie to save something. Others are smart and can make up sophisticated yet poisonous ‘truths’. Some may be simply mistaken, without contriving anything deceitful being in good faith. Finally, one can lie shamelessly, or can cunningly present you a mix of lies and the truth... Sometimes one seems to be telling the truth, but does it masterfully to convince the audience.

Recently, an international non-governmental organisation, Reporters without Borders (RSF) made one of such an inverted truths to the world community. RSF posted on their website information about the ‘murder’ of two journalists in Azerbaijan. Yet they ‘forgot’ to mention how the journalists died.

Inconvenient tragedy…

The tragedy took place after the 2020 war in Garabagh. On June 4, 2021, an operator of the state-run local broadcasting company AzTV, Siraj Abishov, and a staff member of the AzerTAG state news agency, Maharram Ibrahimov, were on a business trip in the liberated Kelbajar district of Azerbaijan. The journalists were accompanied by the deputy representative of the head of the executive power (mayor) in the village of Susuzlug, Kelbajar, Arif Aliyev. They traveled in a military bus KamAZ. Around 11am, the journalists went to Susuzlug. Soon the car hit an anti-tank mine buried on a rural dirt road and killing all three travellers. Four more people were injured.

The Azerbaijani public community, especially the journalists, unequivocally qualified the incident as a war crime. Indeed, the killed journalists were the victims of the Armenian terror due to the refusal of Armenian authorities to hand over the minefield maps to Azerbaijan.

Even then the position of RSF over the death of the killed journalists caused an indignation. They sort of expressed regret about the incident. But they did not feel it was necessary to point out that the death of the Azerbaijani journalists was due to the mines laid by the Armenian invaders.

The Azerbaijani media community, including the heads of the leading media outlets, issued a statement in which they categorically criticised RSF’s biased position and its intention to denigrate Azerbaijan. The statement specifically indicates that during the 44-day war in Garabagh RSF did not express any position on the shelling of Azerbaijani and foreign journalists by Armenian troopers. There was only a general reaction to the deaths of journalists Maharram Ibrahimov and Siraj Abishev as a result of a mine explosion in Kelbajar.

Authors of the Azerbaijani statement have recalled the 44-day war for a reason. A few days before the liberation of Shusha, RSF frantically spread a panic memo to the UN and the Council of Europe claiming that “80 local and foreign journalists were trapped” in Khankendi, unable to reach Armenia “without risking their lives under the shelling of Azerbaijani troops”. RSF called on the UN, the Council of Europe, and Azerbaijan to do everything possible to ensure the evacuation of civilians.

Azerbaijan's response followed immediately. “As to the statement of Reporters Without Borders, who claim that 80 local and foreign journalists cannot safely leave Khankendi, we declare that it was Armenia that blocked the road between Khankendi and Armenia through the Lachin corridor. Yesterday Armenians made a statement announcing the closure of the road,” Aide to the President of Azerbaijan, Hikmet Hajiyev, said. He also mentioned the Aghdere-Kelbajar-Basarkechar road, which at that time was also under the control of the Armenian troopers.

Garabagh was the territory of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia. And the Azerbaijani authorities have repeatedly warned that they could not guarantee the safety of journalists visiting the region on their own. Moreover, they urged all the journalists to get official accreditation from Baku. If someone like the popular blogger Semyon Pegov has deliberately neglected these recommendations and violated the established rules, then why should RSF make claims to Azerbaijan at all? This was the reaction of the media community in general.

Now RSF has gone even further and presented the incident with the mine explosion as if the Azerbaijani authorities were responsible for the deaths of Siraj Abishov and Maharram Ibrahimov.

Thus, Azerbaijan’s Media Development Agency sent a letter to RSF. It expresses indignation that the official website of the organisation contains information about the murder of the two Azerbaijani journalists but does not mention the essence and causes of the incident. This eventually contributes to the development of biased opinion: “[Information on the RSF website] is distorted and forms a biased opinion on Azerbaijan. An attempt to shift responsibility to Azerbaijan for the death of the Azerbaijani journalists who covered the situation in the territories liberated from Armenia after 30 years is inadmissible. This is nothing more than creating ground for unreasonable approaches."

... and unpleasant background

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that RSF (rather, Reporters Without Conscience) discredit themselves. Fifteen years ago, Azerbaijani authorities and the media community suspended cooperation with RSF due to their obvious biased position. In June 2016 in Berlin, during a peaceful action by the Azerbaijani diaspora organisations, RSF journalists tried to boycott the event and raised the flag of the Armenian separatists in Garabagh. In and on itself, it was an open attack on the fundamental norms of international law and a manifestation of a one-sided approach.

There are too many facts of clear xenophobia and Islamophobia in the history of RSF. To the extent that their former leader Robert Menard was elected mayor of the town of Languedoc in France on the lists of the National Front. He began his tenure by ordering to draw up lists of Muslim children studying in city’s schools...

But it's not just about these Reporters Without Conscience. There are too many symptoms of serious crisis in the human rights movement itself.

It all began so nicely and sublimely. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, when the world seemed to become unipolar and global confrontation was a thing of the past, human rights were declared a top priority. They ordered to sacrifice both geopolitical and economic interests for the sake of human rights. Each and every country had to undergo a serious test before it could have the right to cooperate with the US and Europe. Human rights NGOs acted as examiners. They have gradually become powerful and found themselves to be the naval of the world, with... the growing interests of groups of influence with their levers and bags of money.

However, it is unlikely to expect one of the key promoters of human rights—Transparency International—to study the extent of corruption within RSF. After all, this is also an NGO feeding on grants and it is unlikely that such a study will be ordered and paid for. Because they are well aware what unpleasant details the study case can disclose and make publicly available, including the names of individuals and organisations who ordered black promotion campaign against the selected countries, whom, and in what currency the money was paid to.