BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 28. Azerbaijan’s Press Council has issued a statement regarding the blocking of a number of Azerbaijani news websites in Russia, Trend reports.
“A number of Azerbaijani news websites are blocked in Russia,” the statement said. “The reason is that the reports of the Azerbaijani media about Ukraine and their objective position in the Russia-Ukraine conflict do not satisfy Russia. After Haqqin.az and Minval.az websites, Oxu.az has also been blocked in Russia.”
According to the message, Russia neglects freedom of speech and expression, pluralism. This is the wrong approach to the international principles and norms, as well as universal human values.
“This approach limits the right of the Russian society to receive objective information and to see an alternative opinion,” the message said. “Russia’s approach to the Azerbaijani media is disrespectful to the relations between the two countries, the historically established traditions of friendship and cooperation between the Russian and Azerbaijani peoples and the information exchange.”
According to the message, this policy of blocking by Russia cannot be regarded as a desire of the country to clear its information space of extraneous elements because the Azerbaijani media outlets do not abuse the freedom of speech and expression, but regard the conflict from the point of view of the fact of occupation as Azerbaijan has suffered from occupation for almost 30 years.
While addressing the Russian media community and progressive circles, Azerbaijan’s Press Council has called for objective assessing the fact of blocking the Azerbaijani news websites in the Russian Federation.
According to the message, Azerbaijan’s Press Council believes that the Russian society will react to this situation correctly and will not dispute the positive dynamics of relations between Azerbaijan and Russia, as well as the trends that are contrary to the principles of good neighborliness.