Western journalists were denied entry to an energy industry conference in Azerbaijan earlier this month, rekindling concerns about a crackdown on the media in the country ahead of a key United Nations climate change conference in Baku later this year.
At least three journalists from the UK and France told the Guardian they felt “unsafe” after being denied entry to the Baku Energy Week forum, despite having applied with the event’s organisers weeks in advance.
The journalists said they were not given any legitimate reason for being denied entry but chose to leave the venue after what they described as “frightening” and “intimidating” encounters with event organisers.
The conference came just after a Human Rights Watch investigation found that at least 25 journalists and activists have been arrested or convicted in Azerbaijan in the past year, nearly all of them currently in detention.
Activists and civil society groups have expressed concern that climate activism is being stifled amid a media crackdown that has emerged ahead of the UN COP29 climate change conference in Baku later this year.
Lawrence Walker and Christopher Eales, senior investigative reporters at energy news agency Montell News, told the Guardian that they had been rejected by the Baku Energy Week conference and exhibition venue, despite confirming their registration with the event’s organisers in mid-May.
Another UK-based journalist, who has written critical articles about the Azerbaijani government in the past and asked not to be identified, was also denied access to the event despite receiving accreditation weeks before the event.
Journalists left the venue after they heard organizers say in Russian on the phone, “Take them away,” which they said they assumed was a call to venue security.
“In a country where there is no freedom of the press and where local journalists are imprisoned, you can’t cut corners,” Eales said.
A spokesman for events company Caspian Event Organisers said a “fundamental misunderstanding” had meant the journalists had been given accreditation to attend the exhibition but not the forum.
Email correspondence between journalists seen by the Guardian showed them requesting access to both events, which were held at different venues in Baku.
The spokesman added that journalists were also turned away from the exhibition after conference organisers instructed venue staff to “monitor these journalists and prevent them from entering the exhibition”.
Organisers were “extremely humiliated at having to go to such great lengths” to deal with “three very persistent foreign journalists” at the conference venue, a spokesman said. He acknowledged the response was “not very professional” and blamed a “highly tense” period at the event.
Media accreditation for COP29 will be handled through the UN Climate Change Secretariat, and aspiring journalists can register online. COP29 organizers did not respond to requests for comment.
Baku Energy Week was opened by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and was followed by a two-day forum sponsored by BP, France’s Total Energies and German energy company Uniper, and attended by executives from Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company Sokal and other Western energy companies.
Montell News editor-in-chief Richard Sverrisson said it was “deeply worrying” for press freedom and the upcoming COP29 talks that journalists were being “threatened and obstructed simply for doing their jobs”.
“We are relieved that they have returned home safely and hope that no other journalists will be treated like this again simply for attempting to cover an international conference for which they are credentialed,” Sverrisson added.
Mai Rosner, senior campaigner at climate advocacy group Global Witness, said: “Press freedom and civil society are crucial in the fight against climate breakdown. Azerbaijan is trying to silence both, with the most dramatic example being the beating and imprisonment of Gubad Ibadoglu, a prominent critic of Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel industry. An authoritarian petrostate cannot be in charge of climate negotiations.”
The Azerbaijani government has been contacted for comment.
