{"id":2706,"date":"2017-11-07T16:55:45","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T16:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2706"},"modified":"2017-11-08T13:10:28","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T13:10:28","slug":"french-court-rejects-azerbaijani-governments-defamation-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2706","title":{"rendered":"French court rejects Azerbaijani government\u2019s defamation suit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomes today\u2019s decision by a court in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre to reject the Azerbaijani government\u2019s defamation suit against French investigative journalists Elise Lucet and Laurent Richard.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWe are deeply relieved that Azerbaijan has failed to export its censorship to France,\u201d said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF\u2019s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. \u201cAny other decision would have opened a dangerous breach that would have allowed despots all over the world to come and persecute French journalists in France.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Azerbaijani government <a href=\"https:\/\/rsf.org\/en\/news\/azerbaijani-government-tries-export-intimidation-france\">sued<\/a> Lucet and Richard for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-AnuPrxQ3b8&amp;t=186s\">referring<\/a> to it as a \u201cdictatorship\u201d in radio and TV broadcasts in 2015. As far as RSF knows, it was the first time a foreign government brought a defamation suit of this kind against journalists before a French court.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Reporters Without Borders testified in court on 5 September, defending the two journalists and describing how their fellow journalists are persecuted in Azerbaijan, which is ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in RSF\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/rsf.org\/en\/ranking\">2017 World Press Freedom Index<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/rsf.org\/en\/news\/azerbaijani-government-tries-export-intimidation-france\">Read RSF\u2019s detailed press release about the case<\/a> (4 September 2017)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomes today\u2019s decision by a court in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre to reject the Azerbaijani government\u2019s defamation <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2706\" title=\"French court rejects Azerbaijani government\u2019s defamation suit\">[more &gt;&gt;&gt;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-azerbaijan","category-azerbaijan-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2707,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2706\/revisions\/2707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}