When Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, two video-blogging youth activists in Azerbaijan, were detained on 8 July 2009 on what many believe were trumped-up charges, supporters and friends naturally used Facebook to campaign for their release. However, spreading networks wide in order to disseminate information and updates, there were obviously risks involved. Reports of the security services monitoring Facebook were coming out of neighboring Iran, and there was no reason to think it couldn’t happen in Azerbaijan.

For the two young men’s supporters, however, that didn't matter. What was arguably more important was that Facebook was crucial in the campaign to free them. And, as international awareness of the plight of Hajizade and Milli increased before their release in last November, they were probably right. Despite the inherent risks, spreading information quickly and efficiently is one thing that Facebook and Twitter are good at. However, with the use of such tools once again in the spotlight following this year’s popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, the debate over persisting personal and security concerns has re-emerged.

In particular, in a recent interview with Radio Free Europe, Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, started the ball rolling by saying that internal security agencies might actually welcome the use of new- and social-media tools. “The reason why the KGB wants you to join Facebook is because it allows them to learn more about you from afar,” he said. “It allows them to identify certain social graphs and social connections between activists. Many of these relationships are now self-disclosed by activists by joining various groups.”

In Azerbaijan that is certainly proving to be the case. On 5 February, Jabbar Savalan, a 20-year-old activist from the opposition Popular Front, was arrested and charged with narcotics possession, something his supporters and lawyer strongly deny. Instead, they claim, Savalan was detained for comments made on Facebook a day earlier calling for Egypt-style protests in the country. Amnesty International has also denounced the charges, calling them a “pretext to punish Jabbar Savalan for his political activism and to discourage other youth activists from exercising their right to freedom of expression.”

The international human rights organization also noted that Savalan was interrogated without a lawyer and alleges that he was pressured into signing a confession that he later retracted. Amnesty further demands that the authorities “justify Jabbar Salavan’s pretrial detention or release him immediately.”

A few days later, on 9 February, another Popular Front activist, Elchin Hasanov, was summoned by police and instructed to remove messages on his Facebook page calling for protest actions in Savalan's support, and last week Harvard-educated parliamentary candidate Bakhtiyar Hajiyev was arrested. Although the charges against him relate to avoiding military conscription, his supporters say that this was again simply an excuse, given his constitutional right to alternative service instead. Moreover, they allege, before his arrest Hajiyev was questioned about his activities on Facebook.

As well he might have been. Of seven moderators of a recently launched Facebook page calling for Egypt-style protests in Azerbaijan to take place on 11 March, Hajiyev is the only one who lives in the country. Indeed, in an interview with RFE’s Baku bureau days earlier, one of those other moderators said that had he opened the page while living in Azerbaijan he would probably have been arrested. A few days later, another activist, Dayanat Babayev, was detained by police for 10 days for what they say was “disrupting public order” while speaking loudly and inappropriately on a cell phone while walking. At least one witness, however, claims that Babayev was instead forcibly removed from an Internet café.

Yet, despite officials’ apparent concern about its power, Facebook penetration in Azerbaijan remains incredibly low, at just 324,880 users or 3.9 percent of the population. This pales in comparison with even neighboring Georgia, where 516,300 people, or 11 percent of the population, use the site. Nevertheless, the authorities in Baku appear to be taking no chances. In April 2010, for example, Zahid Oruj, a member of parliament’s security and defense committee, spoke out against Facebook by suggesting it could be used by foreign powers to “recruit agents.”

“It is possible that secret agents sit in social networks trying to lure people to cooperate,” he told journalists, suggesting that this perceived threat should be legislated against. “In my opinion, one cannot exclude that intelligence services of various countries can also lead Azerbaijani nationals to secret cooperation through social networks. We must not allow hostile forces to use different Internet services against us. In this matter, the danger comes not only from Armenian nationalists, but also other forces.”

A media campaign to discredit the use of Facebook followed and continues, especially after events in the Middle East and North Africa. On 1 March, for example, the online news site Qaynar.Info published the names of prominent opposition and alternative voices in Azerbaijan who had Armenian contacts and friends listed on their Facebook pages. Responses to the piece from youth activists in Azerbaijan were critical, viewing the article as a further attempt to highlight the site as an internal security threat and to portray those named as “enemies of the state.”

The following day, Rauf Mardiyev, secretary general of the IRELI Public Union, a youth organization considered by many activists to be pro-governmental and the local equivalent of the Russian Nashi, followed the same line. In a blog post titled, “The real face of 11 March,” Mardiyev highlighted the appearance of six Armenian names among the first 50 of 2,658 members signed up on the Facebook page set up by Hajiyev. Although the group was an open one, the post ended by stating that “no other comments are necessary,” with Mardiyev saying he would instead “leave it up to the conscience of readers.”

With public hostility toward Armenians high in Azerbaijan because of the festering conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, playing this card has become predictable in recent years. A household survey in 2009 by the Caucasus Resource Research Centers, for example, found that 97 percent of Azerbaijanis were against friendship with Armenians. Even so, Facebook has proved invaluable in cross-border communication in lieu of traditional means in recent years, but others have already raised concerns about how this could be used against them.

“[One activist] said if pictures of Azerbaijanis together with Armenians are found on the Internet, then they will have to go to the KGB and be questioned,” a German journalist recently wrote to this author after she visited Baku late last year.

Meanwhile, the campaign against Facebook and Twitter has even made it into the broadcast media. Last month, for example, ANS TV ran a 12-minute news item on the “dangers” of Facebook and Twitter. Although starting out neutrally enough by describing how social media can spread information worldwide, it then cut to footage of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking about net freedom before alleging that social-media tools were “dangerous” in Azerbaijan because they damage the morale of young people and could be exploited by “foreign enemies.”

To a lesser extent, following the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia the same approach has been evident in Armenia. With the opposition staging a rally to mark the third anniversary of the 1 March post-election unrest in Yerevan that left 10 people dead, the Armenian National Congress, led by former President Levon Ter-Petrossian, tried to attract international attention to its cause by declaring that it, too, would stage a “Facebook revolution.” What’s more, the congress’ coordinator, Levon Zurabyan, claimed that most of the 132,000 Facebook users in the country supported the call.

Pro-government and nationalist bloggers, now referred to by the local media as “information security experts,” were quick to cast doubt on such claims by again alleging that social-media-induced revolutions were being promoted by the United States while others noted that in any case Zurabyan didn’t even use the site, so had no basis to make such claims. Besides, there had been very little activity noticeable on Facebook, with just 380 people both inside and outside Armenia signing up for the protest page. But that did not necessarily mean few would attend the rally: estimates of the turnout range between 10,000 and 50,000.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that activists’ use of social media played no role in the success of that rally, especially when compared with their more Internet-savvy counterparts in Azerbaijan. But even there, despite increased online activity, some remain unconvinced.

The protests planned for 11 and 12 March in Azerbaijan, where social media are being used extensively by activists, and another in Armenia on 17 March, where they are not, might help to further illuminate the bane-or-boon argument about these tools. Already senior members of the IRELI Public Union are attempting to support the authorities in Baku by countering information from activists in Azerbaijan on Facebook and Twitter ahead of the planned protests, and on 7 March they launched a new project to establish a network of young bloggers.

Meanwhile, as of the time of writing, Facebook is also inaccessible from Azerbaijani cellular phone operator Bakcell for the coming week for, it says, “technical reasons.” In an update on Twitter, IRELI’s Mardiyev denied this, but the decision was later confirmed by Bakcell’s customer service department. (Addition: Facebook is apparently accessible again via Bakcell)

Onnik Krikorian is the Caucasus editor for Global Voices Online and a freelance journalist and photographer in Yerevan.

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True, as a tool for online peace building, Facebook has proven its worth, but some activists in Azerbaijan have already expressed concern at how connections with contacts and friends in Armenia might be used against them. “[One activist] said if pictures of Azerbaijanis together with Armenians are found on the internet, then they will have to go to the KGB and be questioned,” a German journalist friend recently wrote after a visit to Baku, the capital of the oil-rich former Soviet republic. It's also not the first time that ‘warnings' have been voiced by officials alleging that social network sites allow “hostile forces us to use different Internet services against us.”

Indeed, fears of the Internet among the authorities in Baku have been growing in recent years, with two video blogging youth activists, Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli, detained in July 2009 and imprisoned until November last year when international pressure led to their early conditional release. Few buy the government line that they were jailed for ‘hooliganism,' of course, instead considering the action against them intended to prevent and frustrate their online activism. Amnesty International, for example, declared the two men to be prisoners of conscience and the government remains on edge about the potential for social media to foment unrest after uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.

Jabbar Savalan support site

Certainly, even if Facebook penetration remains low at just 3.91 percent (324,800), the authorities are taking no chances. On 5 February, for example, Jabbar Savalan, a 20-year-old activist from the opposition Popular Front, was arrested in Sumgait, a city in Azerbaijan. Charged with narcotics possession, something his supporters and lawyer strongly deny, Savalan is instead believed to have been detained due to comments he made on Facebook calling for Egypt-style protests in the country a day earlier. Amnesty International have also denounced the charges, calling them a “pretext to punish Jabbar Savalan for his political activism and to discourage other youth activists from exercising their right to freedom of expression.”

A few days later, on 9 February, another Popular Front activist, Elchin Hasanov, was also reportedly summoned to police and instructed to remove messages on his Facebook page calling for action in Savalan's support.

In that context, the publication a few days ago of an article identifying prominent activists and journalists in Azerbaijan with Armenian friends and colleagues on Facebook such as LGBT activist Mamikon Hovsepyan and peacebuilder Georgi Vanyan has concerned many. Translated into English, it might read as fairly neutral, but the original Azerbaijani is considered by native Azerbaijani speakers to be quite critical, portraying those named as “enemies of the State.”

It is no secret that a number of social networks, in particular “Facebook”, act as the force behind the processes taking place in the world today. “Facebook”, which has turned into an everyday necessity for millions, knows no borders in certain aspects. To the degree that representatives of two enemy nations and countries become friends on the site, in spite of everything.

Qaynar.info has tried to find famous Azeris with Armenian friends on Facebook. Though many of them make their friends list private, after a brief investigation it has become clear that tens of well-known Azeris are virtual friends with famous Armenian users.

Ironically, both Hovsepyan and Vanyan's reputation as two of arguably only a handful of genuine promoters of peace and tolerance in terms of relations with Azerbaijan isn't mentioned in the article, with the latter also a victim of a recent Facebook smear campaign by nationalists in Armenia.

Regardless, responses to the article from liberal Azerbaijanis on Facebook were ones of alarm, with a prominent journalist calling it “disgusting.” Others considered it as part of an ongoing campaign sanctioned by official circles to discredit the use of Facebook in Azerbaijan, while others simply responded by saying “I'm so ashamed” and “truly pathetic.” Of course, with tensions high between Armenia and Azerbaijan, comments on the article, translated here, were mixed, but some even suggested that Azerbaijani activists and journalists named should be ostracized or ‘punished.'

having read this, i am ashamed for our martyr mothers

why are these people alive? why don’t they go dig their own graves? i used to love that political scientist… i don’t know the rest of them. why do they keep such people at work? let them go work in armenia.

i have no words… they call them legal advocates? if any of them fought with these bastards for Karabakh, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. we used to respect many of these people….

On the other hand, there were other Azerbaijanis who considered the piece to be inexcusable and ‘below the belt.'

shame on you for writing such articles.

it’s really shameful. laughable. you just show how low and backwards you are with such articles.

may god protect us from “patriots” like you. just try to do what Adnan Hajizada has done for this country, then maybe you can discuss the armenians on his friends list. you are not doing anything for your country with this “patriotism”.

so apparently the country has no problems other than this? or you don’t have the courage to talk about the real problems?

The damage, of course, might already have been done even if there has been no other action taken to date. Nevertheless, the apparent intention to discredit them in the eyes of the public remains and was also used against opposition candidates ahead of parliamentary elections held in Azerbaijan last November. Now, on a blog by an activist from the pro-government Ireli Public Union, such tactics continue. In a post entitled “The real face of 11 March” the appearance of 6 Armenian names among 1,745 members ahead of actions planned are highlighted — literally.

And, although the group is an open one, and while several Azerbaijani names had also ‘liked' the Facebook page for the Armenian opposition's own protest held on 1 March, the post ends by stating that no other comments are necessary, with the blogger preferring to instead “leave it up to the reader's conscience.”

Onnik Krikorian is the Caucasus regional editor for Global Voices Online. An earlier shorter version of this post appeared on the Peace & Collaborative Development Network.

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4) Publications of mass media concerning state and internal political issues can be implemented solely within the limits of the official information of state bodies.

5) Ban on leaflets and implementation of political propaganda by other means without permission of corresponding state bodies.

While many news outlets complied with the emergency restrictions, others didn't and soon found their activities curtailed. Because there are no national television stations in Armenia operating independently from the state or government-linked businessmen and officials, the pro-opposition media has been limited to publishing newspapers or online magazines and news services since the pro-opposition TV station, A1 Plus, was taken off the air in April 2002.

Opposition views and opinions could also be heard broadcast via Radio Free Europe, but retransmissions have been pulled from the airwaves since the state of emergency was declared.

But, with online pro-opposition media outlets which haven't complied with the restrictions now blocked inside the country, the situation has created an unprecedented opportunity for blogs to fill the gap. As many are hosted on generic servers such as WordPress or Blogspot, access has not yet been restricted. However, YouTube, which was used by A1 Plus to disseminate video of the weekend's riots, does appear to be inaccessible.

Nevertheless, pro-Ter-Petrossian activists outside of the country have seized upon the opportunity to instead use blogs to disseminate information during what is to all intents and purposes a media blackout in the country. Interestingly, one such blogger, Artmika at Unzipped, likens it to the old Soviet practice of “samizdat.”

Samizdat (Russian: самиздат) was the clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media in Soviet-bloc countries. Copies were made a few at a time, and those who received a copy would be expected to make more copies. This was often done by handwriting or typing.

This grassroots practice to evade officially imposed censorship was fraught with danger as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials.

Vladimir Bukovsky defined it as follows: “I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and [may] get imprisoned for it.”

While the opposition literature has its own site, others such as pro-Ter-Petrossian activist Nazarian are following in the spirit of the old days by republishing content on their own blogs. Although an initial fear that his blog had also been blocked in Armenia proved premature, Nazarian, like Unzipped, has taken on the role of serving as one of the main sources of information for the opposition in Armenia and its Diaspora.

Now that Armenia has been reduced to the level of China, the brave souls try to keep the liberty going by publishing underground papers and radio reports. Fortunately, we have internet now in addition to the traditional methods of samizdat to disseminate information. Below it the issue number one of samizdat. The sources and authors are kept secret to protect them from the Armenian state.

Indeed, in a recent analysis for ISN Security Watch, one Diasporan academic acknowledged this new trend although also identified one of its shortcomings.

With a media blackout in place [..t]he only source of independent (although biased) news remains the various blogs maintained by individuals in Armenia and a handful of international news agencies that have limited access to properly assess the situation in the country.

With YouTube apparently blocked by most ISPs in Armenia (the site times out constantly) it remains to be seen if blogs are targeted next. According to The Armenian Observer and a media legal expert for Internews Armenia, blogs technically fall under restrictions in place as a result of the state of emergency.

However, as of writing there appears to be no censorship or restrictions on local bloggers yet, with Ter-Petrossian activists such as Bekaisa constantly updating her LiveJournal site in Armenian, Russian and English on a daily basis. Just in case, however, Unzipped posts tips on how to circumvent internet censorship.

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