Azerbaijan: news site "Media Forum" suspended due to problems with grant registration

Azerbaijan has suspended the work of the popular news site "Media Forum". The project staff was sent to forced leave because of absence of notification from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on the results of the consideration of the founder’s appeal to register the grant agreement related to the above website.

"The website Mediaforum.az is a project of the non-profit public association ’Internews Azerbaijan’. This public association is a local NGO, whose media projects, including the ‘Media Forum’ one, are implemented on the basis of grant agreements. Because of the fact that the association ‘Internews Azerbaijan’ could not receive a notification about its grant agreements from the MoJ, it was forced to freeze down its activities under these projects," said the management of the website.

The website "Media Forum" has been functioning for over 10 years, covered the events of the political, economic and cultural life of the country, paying its particular attention to defence of human rights and publishing journalistic investigations. The staff is about 20 employees. One of the major donors of the project is the USAID (United States’ Agency of International Development).

The recent amendments to the legislation related to the rules of registration grants "have led to the suspension of project implementation of many NGOs and an overall termination of some of them," said Khalid Agaliev, an expert of the Institute of Media Rights (IMR).

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.