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For Azerbaijan’s ruling establishment, the hosting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Baku in November 2012 was yet another propaganda coup in a year marked by the Eurovision Song Contest, reads the report of Expression Online Initiative.

The authors of the report highlight that at the same time, the authorities apparently fear the internet’s democratizing potential and have attempted to exercise greater control over the Internet.

“Despite hopes that the IGF 2012 would promote multi-stakeholder dialogue for the Internet freedom in Azerbaijan, the situation changed from bad to worse—in fact, in the post-IGF syndrome, the authorities of Azerbaijan has waged crackdown on Internet freedom. Number of worrisome developments have occurred in the aftermath of the IGF 2012, and in particular, during the first half of 2013 in the run up to October’s presidential election.”

Expression Online Initiative believes, the adoption of legislation extending criminal defamation provisions to online content was the single biggest blow to freedom of expression online in the post-IGF Azerbaijan.
A number of civic and political activists who used the Internet to express criticism and call for protest have been languishing behind bars, in connection with exercising their right to free expression. Activists who use Facebook to organize protests are now facing steep fi nes2 under recent changes to the freedom of assembly law. Following IGF in Baku, there were also reports of attacks on the websites of independent and opposition news sources.

“The international community should continue its pressure on President Ilham Aliyev,” the authors of the document report. They call on the authorities to end all forms of impunity for violence against journalists, reverse regressive amendments to freedom of information legislation aimed at limiting the activities of journalists and media outlets, remove defamation provisions from the Criminal Code, Immediately and unconditionally release the currently detained and imprisoned journalists, bloggers, and human rights defenders behind bars.

According to Expression online Initiative 1,250,000 Azerbaijanis have an existing account on Facebook of which 64% are men. Users aged 18-28 make 62.5%, users aged 13-17 - 25% , those aged 29-35 - 11.5%. Twitter is not yet that known in the country.