Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry denies accreditation to famous foreign media to cover parliamentary elections
A number of international media outlets were denied accreditation for working in Azerbaijan ahead of the parliamentary elections, Turan agency reports.
Informed sources told the agency that leading world-famous media outlets and agencies were among those denied. The Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan, however, does not give accurate explanations about the issue. Moreover, some of the denials reportedly came despite previously agreed interviews on purely economic topics with officials.
Meanwhile, according to Turan, the press service of the Foreign Ministry claims all the conditions have been created so that the journalists can normally work during the pre-election period.
According to Trend agency, the spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan, Hikmet Hajiyev, told the website Seçki-2015 (Elections-2015) that the Foreign Ministry carries out the accreditation of the foreign media in accord with the rules recorded in the law on media. All the media representatives, who got accreditation at the Foreign Ministry in accord with those rules, must register at the Central Election Commission before being able to cover the election process.
Hajiyev noted that among the foreign media which applied for accreditation to cover the electoral process, the Turkish, Russian and EU countries’ media make up the majority, there are also appeals from the US and Israel.
Azerbaijan’s Parliamentary elections are scheduled on 1 November 2015. There were recent local reports about the authorities faking a growth of the number of “independent” candidates for the elections. The international agencies reportedly took up rather stern stance regarding the upcoming parliamentary elections. On 11 September 2015, Michael Georg Link, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), announced that, due to restrictions imposed by the Azerbaijani authorities, ODIHR had no choice but to cancel its mission to observe the country’s parliamentary elections. Earlier, ODIHR had reported about its intention to send 380 observers to Azerbaijan.
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