Citing Ethnicity, Azerbaijan Bars Photojournalist

Diana Markosian, a freelance photographer for Bloomberg Markets magazine was denied entry to Azerbaijan last week by authorities who cited her ethnicity as a reason, international news reports said.

On June 27, border guards at the Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku detained Markosian on arrival from the Latvian capital, Riga, then expelled her back to Riga the next day, according to press reports and CPJ interviews. Markosian told CPJ that the border guards took her passport, saying that she had an Armenian last name and that they “needed to clarify something.” Then they put her in the airport’s transit zone where she spent 16 hours until the U.S. Embassy in Baku helped her to buy a ticket for the next return flight to Riga.