, nationality = , image = Elnur_Majidli_for_Wikipedia.png , birth_date = , birth_place =

Baku Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...

Azerbaijan SSR Azerbaijan ( az, Азәрбајҹан, Azərbaycan, italics=no), officially the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (Azerbaijan SSR; az, Азәрбајҹан Совет Сосиалист Республикасы, Azərbaycan Sovet Sosialist R ...

(now

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

) , known_for =Internet activism } Elnur Majidli is an Azerbaijani democracy activist and blogger based in

Paris, France Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. For his role in organizing the 2011 Azerbaijani protests, he was charged with attempting "violent overthrow" of the government. The charges were suspended in June 2011.

Role in 2011 Azerbaijani protests

Starting in March 2011, Azerbaijan saw a series of mass protests for democratic reform inspired by the example of the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring ( ar, الربيع العربي) was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in T ...

. Though based in Strasbourg, Majidli helped to organize a

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

page for a protest on March 11, calling it "the Great Peoples' Day". The date was chosen for being exactly one month after the fall of Egyptian president

Hosni Mubarak Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak, (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011. Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in t ...

. The groups administered by Majidli soon included tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis. Shortly after the page's creation, the Azerbaijan General Prosecutor’s Office contacted Majidli by telephone, ordering him to end his activity or face criminal charges. Majidli refused, and on 1 April, Azerbaijan issued a warrant for his arrest on a charge of "violent overthrow of authority, or distributing materials calling for such". The government filed an

Interpol The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO; french: link=no, Organisation internationale de police criminelle), commonly known as Interpol ( , ), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and cri ...

request for Majidli's arrest, which the

French government The Government of France (French: ''Gouvernement français''), officially the Government of the French Republic (''Gouvernement de la République française'' ), exercises executive power in France. It is composed of the Prime Minister, who i ...

refused to grant. Authorities also brought Majidli's father and cousins to a police station for interrogation. Police were stationed outside the family home for two months, and Majidli's father and brother were fired from their jobs.

Bakhtiyar Hajiyev Bakhtiyar Ilyas oglu Hajiyev ( az, Bəxtiyar İlyas oğlu Hacıyev; born c. 1982) is an Azerbaijani activist and blogger who served a prison sentence from 2011 to 2012 on charges of evading military service. His imprisonment was protested by numer ...

, the only co-organizer of the site living within Azerbaijan, was arrested. After reviewing Majidli's Facebook posts,

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

protested on his behalf, describing the accusation of a call for violent overthrow as "baseless". The organization stated that he appeared to be "prosecuted simply for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and association", and urged Azerbaijan to drop the charges. On 2 June, the charges against Majidli were suspended. Majidli's lawyers described the charges as a "moral terror", and Majidli announced his intention to continue fighting for the charges to be fully dropped, rather than suspended.

Continued activism

By January 2012, Majidli's groups included more than 40,000 members. He helped to organize an anniversary protest on 11 March in which activists continued to call for democratic reform, endorsed by opposition leader

Isa Gambar Isa Yunis oghlu Gambar ( Azerbaijani: ''İsa Yunis oğlu Qəmbər''), also known as Isa Gambar (born February 24, 1957), is an Azerbaijani politician and leader of the Equality Party ''(Müsavat)'', one of the opposition blocs in Azerbaijan. B ...

References

External links

Official websiteElnur Majidli
on

{{DEFAULTSORT:Majidli, Elnur Living people People from Baku Azerbaijani activists Azerbaijani bloggers Azerbaijani journalists Year of birth missing (living people)