Azerbaijan’s government has ordered the suspension of the Azerbaijani operation of BBC News in the capital, Baku, the British news agency confirmed Thursday.
In a statement, the BBC said it had made the “reluctant decision” to close its office in the country after receiving a verbal instruction from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“We deeply regret this restrictive move against press freedom, which will hinder our ability to report to and from Azerbaijan for our audiences inside and outside the country,” a BBC spokesperson said in a statement.
The suspension comes after Azerbaijani state-run media last week reported that the Azerbaijani government wanted to reduce the number of BBC staff working in the country to one.
The BBC said it has received nothing in writing about the suspension from the Azerbaijani government. While the news agency seeks clarification, its team of journalists in the country have stopped their journalistic activities, according to the BBC.
A spokesperson from Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry told VOA in an emailed response that the BBC’s statement about press freedom was "regrettable and unacceptable." The government’s response arrived after publication.
Aykhan Hajizada, the spokesperson, said the ministry told the BBC that "Azerbaijan’s position and decisions on media outlets of all foreign countries are always based on the principle of reciprocity."
Hajizada added that the government’s decision "is not related to the correspondent activities of the BBC" and that "it is planned" to issue an accreditation for one correspondent.
The BBC has operated in Azerbaijan since 1994. The news agency says its Azerbaijani service reached an average of one million people each week in the country of 10.6 million.
The BBC says it will continue its news services in the Azerbaijani language.
The BBC suspension marks the continuation of a harsh crackdown on independent media that the Azerbaijani government has engaged in for years.
The British rights group Global Witness expressed concern about the BBC’s suspension.
"Global Witness extends full solidarity with the BBC’s journalists in Baku, as well as all imprisoned journalists in Azerbaijan," Dominic Kavakeb, co-director of campaigns at Global Witness, said in a statement.
Azerbaijan is among the worst jailers of journalists in the world. As of last week, at least 23 journalists were jailed in the former Soviet country in retaliation for their work, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Many of the journalists jailed in Azerbaijan are accused of foreign currency smuggling, which media watchdogs have rejected as a sham charge.
Among those jailed is Farid Mehralizada, an economist and journalist with the Azerbaijani Service of VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Jailed since May 2024, Mehralizada faces charges of conspiring to smuggle foreign currency and "illegal entrepreneurship, money laundering, tax evasion and document forgery." He and his employer reject the charges, which carry a combined sentence of up to 12 years behind bars.
On the World Press Freedom Index, Azerbaijan ranks 164 out of 180 countries, where 180 shows the worst environment for media freedom.
