Yes, it’s true, Eynulla Fatullayev has been freed under presidential pardon. What a rollercoaster of a couple of days!

On Tuesday, we launched a twitter action to free Eynulla Fatullayev, the Azerbaijani journalist who has been jailed since 2007 for trumped-up charges designed to silence his critical reporting of the Government. With the help of Jon Snow and John Mulholland, we asked you to take a picture of yourself with the message “Eynulla Fatullayev Azad Et!” – Free Eynulla Fatullayev in Azeri – to send directly to @presidentaz. You did us proud and started tweeting your photos, retweeting, and sending messages of support.

We’d obviously got some people in Azerbaijan rattled. During the Media Awards, photoshopped versions of the pictures we’d just taken were tweeted back at us with pro-Azerbaijan messages – you may have received some yourself.

Not that the messages and pictures were going to hold us back. We were fully expecting this to be the continuation of a long campaign – we’ve worked hard for years to free Eynulla – and then this afternoon we started to hear rumours that Eynulla Fatullayev was to be pardoned. At Amnesty, we’re very wary of rumours until we can confirm everything, and then the happy news came from one of our campaigners.

This was a great turn of events, especially so shortly after our mass tweet action! Eynulla gave our campaigner Max this message for everyone who has campaigned for his release:

“I am very happy to be released. I am extremely grateful to Amnesty International, who have campaigned since the beginning. In my opinion you saved me. Thank you to all those who tweeted.”

Over 800 tweets were sent to @presidentaz since Tuesday, and we know that without making a noise, be it by protests, letter-writing or mass-tweeting, we could never get any prisoner of conscience released. So thank you.

I’ll leave you with a video taken today of Eynulla with his family. It’s in Azeri, but the sentiment and the emotion are crystal clear.

Our Twitter action yesterday for wrongly-imprisoned Azerbaijan journalist Eynulla Fatullayev certainly had an impact in Azerbaijan and here in the UK.

Our message to President Aliyev – “Eynulla Fatullayevi Azad et!”, or “Free Eynulla Fatullayev” was tweeted about 600 times to the President’s account. Top journalists at our Media Awards lent their support, including Jon Snow from Channel 4 News, John Mulholland from the Observer and Private Eye’s Ian Hislop. The message was tweeted and retweeted by supporters in Azerbaijan too.

But it seems that not everyone in Azerbaijan likes what we’re saying…

Some government supporters in Azerbaijan have reacted angrily online. If you took the action, you may have got some flak from these tweeters in response.

This was then taken a step further, presumably by the same people. Some of the photos taken at the Media Awards, of people holding up our “Eynulla Fatullayevi Azad et!” placard, were photoshopped with pro-Azerbaijan or anti-Amnesty messages and tweeted back. Cheeky.

To say that Amnesty is picking on Azerbaijan is ridiculous – take a look at our ‘actions’ page and you’ll see that Eynulla’s is just one of many cases we’re working on. It’s not even accurate to imply, as the doctored pics do, that we’ve failed to comment on the conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. There’s this comprehensive report that we issued at the time, for instance.

As far as we’re concerned, we’re happy that our action has rattled a few cages in Azerbaijan. After 50 years of speaking truth to power, Amnesty’s got a very thick skin: we’re quite used to governments and their supporters reacting angrily to our criticism of their human rights records.

We certainly won’t stop campaigning for Eynulla. In fact, supporters in the USA are now picking up the baton and promoting the Twitter action. We’re planning more work on his case, as part of a sustained campaign. Keep an eye on the www.amnesty.org.uk/eynulla page for updates.

Eynulla Fatullayev is a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned for the peaceful expression of his beliefs, and should be released immediately and unconditionally. A few photoshopped pictures aren’t going to stop us campaigning for him. Or you, we hope – thank you for making our Twitter action a success.

Two years ago at the Amnesty UK Media Awards, we honoured Azerbaijani newspaper editor Eynulla Fatullayev with the AIUK Special Award for Journalism Under Threat. Eynulla is an outspoken journalist who has been imprisoned since 2007 on a series of trumped up charges, including defamation, terrorism and incitement to ethnic hatred.

Even though the European Court of Human Rights have quashed some of the charges and called for his release, he remains under lock and key on a more recent conviction for drugs possession brought to dodge the ECHR ruling. We firmly believe that all the charges against Eynulla have been fabricated to silence his critical reporting of the Azerbaijani government, and that Eynulla is a prisoner of conscience.

As we prepare for the 2011 Media Awards, we’re renewing our calls to free Eynulla Fatullayev with a twitter action led by Channel 4’s Jon Snow. Journalists will be taking the action at tonight’s awards – we need you to join them.

Take our twitter photo action – Eynulla Fatullayevi Azad Et!

What to do:

1. Download and print our Amnesty placard (on white, or on black), or get creative with the message “Eynulla Fatullayevi Azad Et!”, which is  “Free Eynulla Fatullayev!” in Azeri.
2. Take a photo of yourself with our placard or your own version
3. Tweet your picture with the following message:
   I’m calling on @presidentaz to free wrongly imprisoned journalist #Eynulla Fatullayev in #Azerbaijan [link to your pic]
   Please keep both of the hashtags so we can find your image and so the message reaches people interested in Azerbaijan.
4. Send a second message encouraging your followers to take part:
   Join me and send your own message urging the release of Eynulla Fatullayev – find out how at http://amn.st/eynulla
5. If you don’t want to take a photo, please join in and send a tweet to @presidentaz – remember to add both hashtags so we can see it!

Have a look at the pictures being tweeted to @presidentaz in our lovely twitter widget:

UPDATE, 25th May: What an amazing response! We’ve seen well over 600 tweets so far, and an unexpected response from Azerbaijan – check our new blog post for details.

At last month’s Media Awards we asked a few student journalists along to get their take on it.

Here are the thoughts of Kat Lay, Editor of London Student

“The mood in Western journalism, in blogs, books and even chats over cups of tea, is very bleak and downbeat at the moment.

That said, the winners’ acceptance speeches almost all included a plea for commissioning editors not to cut the budget for human rights journalism. The type of story recognised by the Amnesty awards is too important to lose. Let’s hope they were listening.”
Naturally, you can see some of the nominees and winners on ProtectTheHuman.com

The media plays a vital role in protecting human rights. Good journalism exposes atrocities and injustice – without it Amnesty couldn’t do its job.

But reporting from conflict zones and repressive countries is difficult, dangerous and expensive.

Our Media Awards recognise and reward the year’s best human rights reporting, encouraging journalists and their editors to keep exposing abuses and holding governments to account.

From photojournalism to broadcast, print journalism to new media, the ten categories celebrate the breadth of reporting and acknowledge the risks journalists face in throwing a spotlight upon injustice around the world.

“There are so many journalists who go unnoticed by the outside world as they endure extraordinary pressures. Among them are some of the best and bravest in our profession, and we need to be more aware of their work.” – Alan Johnston

Check out some of this year’s nominees on ProtectTheHuman.com now or discover the full shortlist at amnesty.org.uk/awards.l

The winners will be announced on Tuesday 2 June, so watch this space!

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Available on ProtectTheHuman.com:

Photojournalism
Photojournalists put themselves right in the firing line to capture the right image. But an iconic picture can totally transform a story.  See breathtaking photos by Lefteris Pitarakis, Eugene Richards and Jim Gold

National Newspapers
The best newspaper journalism can take a human rights story and stay with it over days, weeks or months. They probe deeper into existing issues or expose untold stories. Read this year’s nominated stories

New Media
In only its second year, the New Media Award recognises stories that have harnessed the web’s power to reach new audiences and allow readers to interact and engage with human rights issues. Discover this year’s shortlist