{"id":46235,"date":"2010-09-25T11:32:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T11:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/2010\/09\/25\/obama-called-on-aliyev-to-release-jailed-bloggers-adnan-and-emin\/"},"modified":"2010-09-25T11:32:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-25T11:32:00","slug":"obama-called-on-aliyev-to-release-jailed-bloggers-adnan-and-emin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2010\/09\/25\/obama-called-on-aliyev-to-release-jailed-bloggers-adnan-and-emin.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama Called on Aliyev to Release Jailed Bloggers Adnan and Emin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\">US President Barak Obama met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in New York today to discuss issues of shared interest and ways to further strengthen relations between our two nations, reads a press release issued by the White House.<\/span><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><span style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\">\u201cIn the context of President Obama\u2019s speech at the UN yesterday, he expressed his hope that Azerbaijan as a young democracy would implement democratic reforms and increase protections for human rights, including by releasing two jailed bloggers,\u201d according to the release dated Sept. 24.<\/span><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><span style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\">Recall that two days ago, relatives of the two jailed Azerbaijani bloggers \u2013 Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli \u2013 had appealed to Obama to raise the issue with Aliyev during talks scheduled for Friday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.<\/span><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><span style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\">&#8220;Please remember these youth activists, punished solely for their aspirations to see their own country advance on the path of liberty and progress and join the community of free nations,&#8221; they wrote.<\/span><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><span style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\">Hajizade, 27, was sentenced to two years in prison and Milli, 30, to two-and-a-half years.<\/span><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><span style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\">The two bloggers were arrested in July 2009 shortly after satirising the government and what they saw as the country&#8217;s docile press by posting an Internet video that showed a donkey giving a press conference, AFP reports.<\/span><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><span style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\">The authorities have insisted the charges were unrelated to the bloggers&#8217; criticism of the government, but to a scuffle in a restaurant.<\/span><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><span style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\">But the bloggers and rights groups say the arrests were politically motivated.<\/span><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><span style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\">Azerbaijan&#8217;s Supreme Court last month rejected an appeal of their convictions.<\/span><br style=\"font-family: Arian AMU\" \/><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bloggers Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[16181,615,11389,16182,10677,11797],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}