Azerbaijan: nine jailed women journalists report sexual abuse as detainees handed roses for International Women’s Day

Every year, on 8 March, while the world celebrates women's rights, roses are handed out to women detainees in Azerbaijani prisons - a gesture that rings hollow for women journalists reporting rape threats and sexist humiliation from behind bars. On 18 February, around ten guards, including men, burst into the cell of three Meydan TVreporters at the pretrial detention centre in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, ostensibly to conduct an inspection. They forced open the toilet door, where they found Aysel Umudova.

In their letterrecounting the incident, the journalists wrote that Hayala Agayevasustained visible injuries to her right hand and left wrist during the altercation. The deputy prison director, Javid Gulaliyev, reportedly raised his fist a few centimetres from Aytaj Tapdyg's face, threatening to hit her. After eyeing the three women up and down with a lewd gaze, he allegedly said, "My sperm is everywhere," in a statement that the journalists likened to a rape threat. Two days later, at a court hearing, the judge refused one of their lawyers access to surveillance camera footage that may have documented the scene.

The violence reported two weeks ago by the Meydan TVjournalistsis part of a series of allegationsdocumented in recent months. In a letter published in December, Aysel Umudova said she had been subjected to sexual harassment and ill-treatment during her arrest and transfer to a detention centre a year earlier. She notably described "unwanted physical contact" imposed by a police officer in the vehicle, an experience which has left her with psychological scars.

Former Voice of America(VOA) journalist Ulviyya (Ali) Guliyevaalso says she was beaten and threatened with rape in police custody on 6 May 2025 in an attempt to blackmail her into handing over the passwords to her electronic devices. At the penitentiary complex in the city of Lankaran - where several women journalists from Abzas Mediahave been transferred- credible allegations indicate that the prison director physically assaulted a detainee on 24 January 2026. Against this backdrop, families fear for the safetyof the imprisoned journalists amid persistent suspicions of impunity within the prison system.

"Nine women - ranging in age from their mid-twenties to their early fifties - are sitting in Azerbaijani prisons for the work they did as reporters. Silencing women journalists has become a particular focus and rising trend in Azerbaijan amid the ongoing media crackdown,"said Subhan Hasanli, a human rights lawyer. In a society where patriarchal norms already restrict women's place in public life, the weaponisation of sexist defamation, sexual threats and violence behind bars aims to crush not only individuals but also the very idea that women have a place in investigative journalism.

Despite being locked up, several of these reporters, such as Sevinj Vagifgizi, continue to document and tell the public about detention conditionsand the treatment of prisoners in Azerbaijan, turning their confinement into an act of professional resistance.

RSF regularly updates a gallery of profiles of the media professionals currently imprisonedin the country.