Repression Intensifies in Azerbaijan: Scholars and Journalists are Filling up Jails

By imprisoning Bahruz for long years, the Azerbaijani authorities have already transformed Bahruz into a symbol. A symbol that contradicts, opposes, and challenges them, and has an alternative way of existence to autocratic nationalism.

On June 30, leading Azerbaijani journalist Ulviyya Ali interviewed popular Azerbaijani doctoral student and media commentator Bahruz Samadov. The surrealism in this event was that the topic of the interview was not Samadov’s research activities, or what he thought about ongoing peace negotiations between his country and Armenia, but his imprisonment and the 15-year sentence he received from an Azerbaijani court only a few days earlier. Ulviyya Ali is one of the leading Azerbaijani journalists, a former correspondent of Voice of America, and herself imprisoned. The interview took place in a Baku prison.

In the interview, Samadov said: “The last time I gave a critical speech in Manchester, my speech was about the policies of recent years. This is a target for the authorities. My arrest was also a response to Europe’s attitude to the events of September 2023. I was against the war, but this does not mean being against the return of the lands.” And the most dramatic in the interview is about why he was arrested: “At the State Security Service, I was told the issue was Armenians citing my articles.”

Imagine a scholar being arrested, imprisoned, tortured, simply because colleagues from the rival community read and cite his articles.

The Manchester event Bahruz Samadov is referring to, was the second academic workshop of Armenia-Azerbaijan Scholar’s Initiative (Araz), held in June 2024 at the University of Manchester. The author of this article, along with three other colleagues – Altay Goyushov, Aude Merlin and Laurence Broers,  is a co-organizer of that academic workshop. Our initiative was exactly to have academic exchanges between Armenian, Azerbaijani, English, and Belgian academics. What brings us is not our ethnicity, but our academic research. And the aim is exactly to read and learn from each other, rather than to use “history” to produce nationalistic ideologies and justify war and violence. In some countries however, exercising our professions as academic researchers seems to be a crime.

On June 20, 2024, at the University of Manchester, Bahruz Samadov presented his paper on the times of trouble in his country of origin, Azerbaijan. Samadov, a doctoral student, was researching how the series of crises in Azerbaijan in the early years of independence led to the establishment of the autocratic rule of the Aliyev dynasty in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. The paper is titled “Anxiety and Hegemony: Statecraft in Crisis-Ridden Azerbaijan (1991-1995).” A year after presenting his research paper, on June 23, 2025, a court in Baku condemned the doctoral student to fifteen years of imprisonment.

Bahruz Samadov is not only one of the most original young scholars that I have met in several decades, but his uniqueness lies in the political courage that he portrayed on more than one occasion. In September 2020, when Azerbaijani armed forces attacked Nagorno-Karabakh, Samadov was one of a handful of young peace activists who demonstrated against the war in Baku, for which he was arrested and imprisoned. But Samadov was clear in his analysis; in an interview given at the height of the war, he told his fellow activists “prepare to be marginalised”. At the time of the Karabakh war, many Azerbaijani dissidents thought that military victory would not only finally give Ilham Aliyev legitimacy to rule the country he inherited from his father, but it would also ease repression and open the country.  Indeed, many Azeri dissidents left European exile to return to Baku, and have since repeated the regime’s talking points there.

The opposite happened: repression only increased since the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azerbaijani authorities cracked down on what remained of independent journalists, political activists, human rights defenders, and even independent academics. On June 20, 2025, a court gave a group of journalists from Abzas Media jail sentences between seven and nine years for “money laundering.” Now, more than 300 political prisoners exist in Azerbaijani jails. Another political prisoner is the young scholar Igbal Abilov, from the Talysh ethnic minority, who was sentenced in May 2025 to an 18-year jail sentence, for “high treason.”

Azerbaijan looks like a big prison; since the Covid-19 pandemic, its land borders remain closed, as if the disease remains in the country. Border closure was extended once again until October 1, 2025.

Azerbaijani authorities accuse Bahruz Samadov of “high treason” and having passed information to Armenian intelligence agencies. It is not clear what kind of sensitive information a doctoral student in political science at Charles University in Prague might have, but Azerbaijani authorities have referred to alleged contact with three Armenian women, all three academics, two of whom were present at the Manchester University workshop last year. At the same time, Azerbaijan is in peace negotiations with neighbouring Armenia. Azerbaijani authorities also allow pro-government “thinktanks” to take part in events and talk with their Armenian counterparts, on the condition that they lazily repeat the official line.

Then, why this extremely harsh repression of a doctoral student? The reason is that Bahruz Samadov single-handedly succeeded where the entire Azerbaijani opposition failed: to develop an alternative discourse to that of state-sponsored nationalism, that the way to freedom and prosperity for the Azerbaijani people was not through wars and ethnic cleansing, but through talking, meeting, exchanging and working with his Armenian counterparts. That peaceful coexistence with neighbouring Armenians was not only possible, but also desirable.

Bahruz Samadov knew the risk he was taking for his thoughts and for his actions, but he was also full of hope. Back in 2020, while he knew that activists like him would remain marginalized, he also thought that “this marginalization is not something long-lasting”. After the prosecutor demanded a harsh prison term, Bahruz Samadov attempted suicide in his prison cell, only to be saved by a fellow inmate.

By imprisoning Bahruz for long years, the Azerbaijani authorities have already transformed Bahruz into a symbol. A symbol that contradicts, opposes, and challenges them, and has an alternative way of existence to autocratic nationalism.