She covered human rights for VOA in Azerbaijan. Now she's in jail.

Washington Post

15-05-2025

Ulviyya Ali took out her phone and rushed to write a letter asserting her innocence. She had not yet been charged with a crime, but she had a hunch that she would soon lose her freedom.
'If you are reading this message, it means I have been arrested on trumped-up charges due to my journalistic activity,' Ali, 31, who was working as a reporter for the U.S. government-funded news outlet Voice of America, wrote in January. '… It is known to everyone that the Azerbaijani state has no tolerance left for independent media.'
Ali — who is known among her friends as 'Ulka' and whose legal name is Ulviyya Guliyeva — wrote the letter just before complying with a summons for questioning at the police headquarters in Baku, the capital of the former Soviet republic.
She knew that several other journalists had been detained immediately after they arrived there. In fact, she had made a habit of sending home-cooked meals to them and their cell mates in recent months. She prepared for the worst, feeding her two cats and sending photos of herself for friends to publish in case she never returned.
Azerbaijani authorities hit her with a travel ban but allowed her to walk free — until May 7, when police raided her home and arrested her sometime after 11 p.m.
'I would not say she was afraid. She was very calm and psychologically ready for it,' said Nilufar Mammadrzayeva, one of Ali's friends and a 25-year-old labor activist from Azerbaijan who is currently moving from country to country for fear of government persecution.
Ali is being accused of currency smuggling — a charge that has been levied against other journalists in the country — after police claimed they found more than 6,000 euros, or about $6,700, in her home.
Her mother, Ilhama Guliyeva, 58, told The Washington Post that her daughter was then tortured in a pre-trial detention facility, with police and interrogators dragging her by the hair, beating her over the head and threatening to 'violate her ladyhood' until she surrendered her phone and laptop passwords. Ali and her lawyer had relayed these details to Guliyeva by phone from the detention facility, she said.
Azerbaijan — an authoritarian country wedged between Europe and Asia — is ranked 167 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index, and it is known for squashing activism and media seen as critical of its government. President Ilham Aliyev has 'waged a merciless war' against the media since he took office in 2003, and in late 2023 launched 'a new wave of fierce repression against the country's last remaining journalists.' Ali is one of at least 25 journalists currently in detention in Azerbaijan, and she was the last remaining journalist to regularly cover court hearings before her arrest.
'What made her a target was the fact that she was one of the few remaining journalists on the ground who kept reporting,' said Arzu Geybulla, 41, a writer and editor at Global Voices who is from Azerbaijan.
In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that forced Voice of America to immediately cease operations, pausing a more than 80-year mission to promote press freedom and democratic values abroad. The move has been criticized for potentially endangering VOA journalists — particularly those who could face potential persecution in their home countries if their work visas are canceled, as well as those who report under authoritarian governments that may have been otherwise hesitant to go after reporters working for a U.S. government institution.
'Having VOA behind you, or one of our sister networks, it could sometimes be a measure of protection,' said Jessica Jerreat, VOA's press freedom editor. She and several others filed a lawsuit in March attempting to stop the Trump administration from dismantling the organization and its parent agency.
'To me, this is very much about what's going to happen to our most vulnerable colleagues. They've risked their lives to report for us, and we've always been able to protect them,' she said.
According to Jerreat, more than 1,300 VOA staffers were placed on paid leave and immediately lost access to the newsroom and their computer systems. Many others lost their jobs as well as direct contact with safety specialists at the organization, who often kept tabs on reporters based in turbulent areas and helped with their safety.
Ali was advised by her VOA colleagues to pause her work in February, partly due to the government pressure she was facing. The Azerbaijani government also appeared to be clamping down further on foreign media and revoked press accreditation for two VOA reporters in late February, according to Jerreat.
Ali then lost her job when Trump dismantled the news service in March. That month, she told JAMnews that VOA's closure would leave Azerbaijan 'with nothing but state propaganda.'
'She was depressed all the time, being laid off and facing a travel ban,' said Vahid Aliyev, a 34-year-old human rights activist from Azerbaijan and a friend of Ali's.
'We were talking about how the Trump administration has emboldened the government in Azerbaijan to close down international media, which is usually more protected in Azerbaijan,' he added.
VOA Director Michael Abramowitz told The Post in a statement that 'Ms. Ali stopped working for VOA because it was shut down.'
'But I am deeply concerned about her imprisonment,' he added. 'She has had a long and productive association with VOA, and I trust the U.S. government is doing everything it can to secure her release.'
The White House and the Azerbaijan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to requests for comment.
After losing her job, Ali began searching for other work while continuing to report on court hearings and protests from her social media accounts. She worried about how she would manage to pay rent and continue feeding her cats, her friends said.
She was not naive to the dangers of her job. In May 2024, Farid Mehralizada, an Azerbaijani journalist who reported for VOA's federally funded sister network, was arrested on smuggling charges. Even before Ali faced a travel ban, Mammadrzayeva said she and others had 'begged' Ali to temporarily stop reporting and to stay out of the country, to which Ali had refused.
'She said, 'No, I'm a journalist. I cannot live any other way,'' Mammadrzayeva recalled. 'She was the only journalist left in the country who was still covering court hearings. … She said she will cover everything until she is detained.'
In 2021, Ali was 'brutally beaten' by police and had her camera broken while covering a rally over the killing of a domestic violence victim in Baku, according to Gulnara Mehdiyeva, a 35-year-old women's rights activist and friend of Ali's who lives in exile. She credited Ali with exposing police violence that day with the photos she took.
'I want people who care about human rights to know there is a country called Azerbaijan where innocent people face repression, face charges, just because they tell the truth,' Mehdiyeva said. 'The government takes their youth to keep their dictatorship alive.'
Ali faces up to eight years in prison and was arrested as part of the government's broader criminal case against a German-based news organization called Meydan TV. Ali and Meydan TV have said they never worked together, and at least nine journalists from the organization have been jailed on allegations of bringing Western funding into the country illegally, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
For now, Ali's mother is calling for the Azerbaijani government to drop its 'fabricated' charges and for her daughter to be 'released immediately and unconditionally.' She said she hopes to see Ali continue to report one day.
'She has always been on the right side of history,' she said. 'She has always been on the side of the oppressed.'