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 "It is deeply disturbing that Azerbaijani authorities would cite the ethnic background of a foreign reporter as a reason for barring her entry to the country," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney over Bloomberg Markets freelance photographer Diana Markosian’s case who was denied to enter in Azerbaijan.

"Diana Markosian should be allowed to work in Azerbaijan as freely as any other journalist," Robert Mahoney said.

CPJ official website covers the whole story of Diana Markosian, which reads:

Diana Markosian, a freelance photographer for Bloomberg Markets magazine was denied entry to Azerbaijan last week by authorities who cited her ethnicity as a reason, international news reports said.

On June 27, border guards at the Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku detained Markosian on arrival from the Latvian capital, Riga, then expelled her back to Riga the next day, according to press reports and CPJ interviews. Markosian told CPJ that the border guards took her passport, saying that she had an Armenian last name and that they "needed to clarify something." Then they put her in the airport's transit zone where she spent 16 hours until the U.S. Embassy in Baku helped her to buy a ticket for the next return flight to Riga.

Markosian holds both U.S. and Russian citizenship, she told CPJ.
A government spokesman told the Baku-based news agency APA that Markosian was deported because authorities would be unable to provide her with "security" since she is an ethnic Armenian.

Markosian told CPJ that before her travel to Baku she and the newsroom told the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry about her visit, and were assured there would not be any complications. APA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov as saying the government had sent a letter to Bloomberg management saying that Azerbaijan is at war with Armenia and because of this "there will be problems to provide security for Armenian Diana Markosian." Authorities asked Bloomberg to send another photographer instead of Markosian, Polukhov told APA. There have been no reports of other ethnic Armenians being denied entry to Azerbaijan.

Ty Trippet, a spokesman for Bloomberg LP, told CPJ that the company had not put out any statements on the case.