It has been several weeks since the independent Russian-language “Realni Azerbaijan” Internet newspaper from the oil-rich former Soviet repulic has not been updated after Azerbaijani officials closed the website down. I used to read that site often and summarize some of their breaking reportings (such as the recent affair of three Armenian journalists in Nakhichevan).

Just weeks before cracking down perhaps the only independent Azerbaijani voice, a court in Baku sentenced its editor to 2 and a half years in jail for having visited Armenia and questoned the official Azerbaijani line in regards to the 1992 massacre of several hundred Azeri civilians in Khojalu during the Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The colleague of the jailed editor was killed last year after comparing Azerbaijan’s regime to a Sicilian mafia.

I guess the most troubling aspect about this oppression in Azerbaijan is the world ignorance and Sacha Cohen continues to be the only person to have ridiculed autocrat president Ilham Aliyev whose photo apears at the end of the credits of Borat.