Press centers
The International Press Center is among the places that have been closed for repair purposes for 2 months. Some people believe the repair work was intentionally planned to coincide with the elections, in attempt to limit opportunities for public discourse on pressing issues and large gatherings.
The “Caspian Plaza” conference hall has ceased its operations as well. According to the facilities’ manager Elshan Suleymanov this is due to an auto-garage to be built in the yard of the building and repair work to be done on the top floor of the conference hall. “The repair and construction work causes noise. This interferes with conferences. Therefore we decided to cease the operations of the conference hall until the end of October,” he said.
There are recorded the cases in other conference halls, when the public organizations are either refused or interrogated in details about the purpose, audience and speeches to be conducted during the event.
Closed parks
All small and middle-sized parks in the capital have been surrounded by the decorative walls, which are usually surrounding the repair areas for decoration. The walls have the notes “closed for repairs”, however, the regular observations show no repairs are being conducted within the surrounded area. Among the closed parks are all the central parks, where the pickets used to take place in different times. Factually, there has not been a place in the first and second circle of Baku, where a group of 5-10 people could gather.
Political forums
The political forum of “Day.az” site has been closed too. “Day.az” website director Elnur Baimov stated that provocative topics were being discussed in the forum. And the political forum of the site will be closed for a month –during election campaign, so that he “doesn’t have a headache.” The political forum of the site will be reopened after the presidential elections are over, according to Baimov.
“Media Forum” fixed tariff for political advertisements related to the presidential elections to be conducted next month, and then “Internews Azerbaijan” appealed to the Central Election Commission (CEC) and reported official information about this. However, during a meeting conducted by the CEC Press Group the appeal was turned down and Media Forum thus be unable to place political advertisements on its site.
Law and Development Public Union Chairman Hafiz Hasanov and Media Rights Institute representative Khalid Agaliyev gave commentary on the Central Election Commission Press Group’s decision regarding the placement of pre-election propaganda materials on “Media Forum” site.
