About Haqqin.az

Haqqin.az

Haqqin.az is a Baku-based news and analysis portal founded and edited by the Azerbaijani journalist Eynulla Fatullayev. Publishing mainly in Russian and Azerbaijani, it is known for political news and forthright commentary on Azerbaijani, regional and international affairs. The portal's history cannot be separated from that of its founder: Fatullayev was once one of Azerbaijan's best-known imprisoned journalists, a UNESCO press-freedom prize winner whose case was taken up by press-freedom organisations worldwide, and Haqqin.az is the platform he built after his release in 2011. External monitors today describe the site as pro-government, a transformation that is itself a documented part of Azerbaijani media history.

Eynulla Fatullayev before Haqqin.az

Eynulla Emin oglu Fatullayev was born on 25 September 1976 in Baku. Before founding Haqqin.az he was editor-in-chief of the independent Russian-language weekly Realny Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani-language daily Gundalik Azerbaijan, publications noted for criticism of the Azerbaijani government, its press-freedom record and its human rights policies. In 2007 he was convicted on charges including libel, threat of terrorism, incitement of ethnic hatred and tax evasion and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison; while in custody he received a further sentence after heroin was said to have been found in his cell, a charge many observers believed was fabricated to prevent his release.

His imprisonment became an international cause. Reporters Without Borders, International PEN and the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the sentence, and Amnesty International named him a prisoner of conscience and a priority case. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in his favour in 2010, and he was released under a presidential pardon on 26 May 2011 after four years in prison. The International Press Institute, which had campaigned for his release, later invited him to speak at its 2012 World Congress in Trinidad and Tobago alongside the Turkish journalist Nedim Sener. In 2012 UNESCO awarded him the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, which he accepted on World Press Freedom Day in Tunis.

Founding and character of the portal

After his release, Fatullayev founded Haqqin.az and became its editor-in-chief, a role recorded in his biographical entries and in IPI's description of him as head of the internet portal haqqin.az and chairman of the Azerbaijani non-governmental organisation Public Union for Human Rights. The portal developed as a news and analysis site with a strong authorial voice: political reporting, commentary and polemical articles associated with its editor, published mainly in Russian with Azerbaijani content as well. The Prism UA disinformation resilience study, listing Azerbaijan's leading Russian-language sites, described Haqqin.az plainly as a Russian-language, pro-governmental outlet, and that description has been repeated in substance by other monitors.

The distance between the founder's earlier reputation and the portal's later alignment is documented rather than anecdotal. Amnesty International ended its cooperation with Fatullayev in January 2013, stating that he had misled the organisation about the funding source of a research project on human rights in Germany and expressing its belief that Haqqin.az was used by the Azerbaijani government to discredit European criticism of human rights violations in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani independent media, such as Mikroskop Media, routinely introduce him as a former political prisoner turned pro-government journalist and editor-in-chief of the pro-government news site Haqqin.az. The European Court of Human Rights later found violations in the drug case brought against him in prison and awarded him compensation, a reminder that his original prosecution remains officially recognised as flawed even as his later editorial stance changed.

Content, languages and audience

Haqqin.az publishes news and analysis on Azerbaijani politics and society, the South Caucasus, Russia, Ukraine and wider international affairs. Its Russian-language output is its most influential dimension: Russian remains the lingua franca through which much of the post-Soviet region reads Azerbaijani news, and Haqqin.az's commentary has been aimed at that regional audience as much as at readers inside Azerbaijan. The site's style, as described in analytical literature, is direct and categorical, with strong formulations in both news reports and analytical and journalistic essays, particularly on the Russia-Ukraine war, where its coverage has used sharply critical language about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Blocking in Russia and partial unblocking

Haqqin.az was among the first Azerbaijani sites blocked in Russia after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The International Press Institute reported that Roskomnadzor blocked four Azerbaijani news operations, including Haqqin.az and Minval.az, with media reports identifying their Ukraine war coverage as the principal reason and no explanation or prior warning reportedly given. Caucasus Watch, reporting on 23 March 2022, recorded that Roskomnadzor justified the Haqqin.az block under federal legislation on calls for unrest, extremism and dissemination of unreliable information, acting on a request from the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, and that minval.az was also blocked.

OONI measurement data collected in Russia and analysed by Azerbaijan Internet Watch confirmed the blocks on haqqin.az from at least 7 June 2022 alongside minval.az, oxu.az and the Russian editions of Oxu.az and Baku.ws. Analytical reporting on the episode notes that Russian requests for Baku to temper the site's rhetoric were refused, with the site's independent status cited, before Roskomnadzor acted; the same analysis records a Roskomnadzor decision to unblock Haqqin.az in Russia about a year later, in March 2023. The episode is the most internationally documented event in the portal's history and demonstrates the regional reach of its Russian-language commentary.

Role in domestic information episodes

Inside Azerbaijan, Haqqin.az has been a protagonist in contested media episodes. In September 2022, Mikroskop Media's chronology of the arrests of Xural TV head Avaz Zeynalli and lawyer Elchin Sadigov recorded that Fatullayev played the main role in the affair by publishing a voice recording and alleging a bribe of 20,000 manats, claims the accused denied, saying the recording concerned documents rather than money. Pro-government sites including Oxu.az, Baku TV, Baku.ws and Qafqazinfo circulated the claim. The episode, whatever view is taken of the underlying allegations, illustrates how Haqqin.az functions within Azerbaijan's pro-government media ecosystem: originating material that aligned outlets then amplify, with direct consequences for the people named.

Haqqin.az and Minval.az

Azerbaijani independent reporting describes both Haqqin.az and Minval.az as news websites associated with Fatullayev and long known for their pro-government stance. The pairing recurs in external coverage: the two sites were blocked in Russia at the same time in March 2022, are tested together in OONI censorship measurements, and are treated by monitors as companion Russian-language outlets carrying Baku-aligned perspectives to a regional audience. Readers researching either title will repeatedly encounter the other, and directory users should understand them as related parts of the same editorial project rather than as wholly separate enterprises.

Press-freedom context

Haqqin.az occupies an unusual place in press-freedom literature. Its founder's case is a landmark in the documentation of the persecution of Azerbaijani journalists in the 2000s, cited by Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the European Court of Human Rights. The portal he later built, however, is cited by the same ecosystem of monitors as a pro-government voice, and Reporters Without Borders' broader assessment is that virtually the entire media sector in Azerbaijan is now under official control. Both halves of that record are verified and both belong in an accurate profile: Haqqin.az is simultaneously a product of Azerbaijan's press-freedom struggles and an example of how its media landscape subsequently changed.

What is not publicly verified

A precise public launch date for Haqqin.az is not stated in the authoritative sources consulted for this profile, beyond its establishment by Fatullayev after his release in May 2011, and no date is asserted here. Staffing levels, audience statistics and financing arrangements are not publicly documented; external descriptions of the site's alignment rest on the assessments of IPI, Amnesty International, Prism UA, Azerbaijani independent media and censorship monitors cited above, not on the portal's own self-description. Claims about the 2023 unblocking in Russia rest on analytical reporting rather than a published Roskomnadzor statement reproduced in the sources consulted, and are presented here with that qualification.

Haqqin.az today

Haqqin.az remains an active Baku-based news and analysis portal under Eynulla Fatullayev's editorship, publishing mainly in Russian and Azerbaijani and commenting forcefully on Azerbaijani politics, the South Caucasus and the Russia-Ukraine war. Its significance for a media directory is threefold: it is one of Azerbaijan's most-read commentary-led portals, it is a case study in the transformation of post-Soviet journalism embodied by its founder's journey from prisoner of conscience to pro-government editor, and it is a documented actor in the information confrontation between Azerbaijan and Russia that followed the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.