{"id":131971,"date":"2025-02-21T11:23:43","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T07:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/?p=131971"},"modified":"2025-02-21T11:38:14","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T07:38:14","slug":"global-witness-condemns-bbc-baku-office-closure-by-azerbaijani-authorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/politics\/131971\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Witness condemns BBC Baku office closure by Azerbaijani authorities"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/globalwitness.org\/en\/press-releases\/global-witness-condemns-move-by-azerbaijan-authorities-to-shut-down-bbc-baku-bureau\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Global Witness<\/a> has expressed concern about the repressive move by the Azerbaijani authorities to close the BBC office in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku.<\/p>\n<p>A statement from the BBC today said they have closed their office and suspended the activities of their journalists, following verbal instructions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n<p>It comes just a few months after the BBC exclusively covered a Global Witness investigation at COP29, revealing that the COP29 CEO &ndash; also the Azerbaijan Deputy Energy Minister &ndash; used his role to facilitate a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals. In his subsequent opening address to COP29, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, launched a tirade against &ldquo;western fake news&rdquo; media and NGOs, as well as lauding the use of fossil fuels. Dominic Kavakeb, Co-Director of Campaigns at Global Witness, said, &ldquo;This is a state continuing to pursue fossil fuels, attacking press freedom and violently cracking down on dissent&#8228;&rdquo; Global Witness has extended full solidarity with the BBC&rsquo;s journalists in Baku, as well as all imprisoned journalists in Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Global Witness has expressed concern about the repressive move by the Azerbaijani authorities to close the BBC office in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku. A statement from the BBC today said they have closed their office and suspended the activities of their journalists, following verbal instructions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Azerbaijan. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":131963,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,43,95,98,51,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-world","category-azerbeijan","category-other-en","category-law","category-top-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abcmedia.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}