The Azerbaijani government uses "criminal laws" and violent attacks to silence dissenting journalists, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Tuesday.
The 94-page report, entitled 'Beaten, Blacklisted, and Behind Bars: The Vanishing Space for Freedom of Expression in Azerbaijan,' documents the government's efforts to limit freedom of expression.
"The attacks on free speech threaten to undermine the legitimacy of parliamentary elections scheduled for November 7, 2010," the NGO said.
"You can't have a free and fair vote when the people who report the news are in jail or have been harassed into silence," Giorgi Gogia, South Caucasus researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report, said.
The report says that at least nine journalists have left the country in the past three years to seek political asylum abroad.
BAKU, October 26 (RIA Novosti)
