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In the world press freedom index Azerbaijan ranks the 162nd out of 180 countries, worsening its position by two points, reported the international organization “Reporters Without Borders” in its report.

Azerbaijan has managed to eliminate almost all traces of pluralism, forcing the few remaining independent newspapers to close one by one by throttling their sources of income, prosecuting them on trumped-up charges and hounding their employees, the report reads.

“The imprisonment of Khadija Ismayilova, one of the pioneers of investigative journalism in Azerbaijan (162nd), showed that Ilham Aliyev’s autocratic regime has reached the point of no-return. Arbitrary arrests, which drove dozens of journalists into exile in 2014, turned the country into Europe’s biggest prison for news providers,” the report reads.

“Reporters Without Borders” extreme violence is one of the methods used against critical journalists and bloggers in Azerbaijan. Ilgar Nasibov, one of the few independent journalists and human rights defenders in Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, was the target of a brutal attack while working in his office on 21 August. In Azerbaijan, the police increasingly use criminal thugs to do their dirty work and sometimes coordinate operations with them. The report also notes that last summer the Azerbaijani authorities have completely eliminated the main NGOs supporting the media.