Abzas Media journalist Nargiz Absalamova, who is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence, has been honoured with the Free Media Award.

The award ceremony took place on 6 November in Hamburg, Germany. The prize was accepted on her behalf by Abzas Media director Gunel Safarova. 

The award is presented by Norway’s Fritt Ord Foundation and Germany’s ZEIT Stiftung Bucerius to support journalists who defend freedom of expression and continue professional reporting despite censorship and political pressure.

Absalamova sent a letter to the ceremony. In her message, she wrote:

“I understood what it truly means to be a journalist only within the cold walls of prison.

When I was free, my profession was just a job. Now, it is as essential as breathing.

These years haven’t stopped time for me - they’ve only made it narrower. I’ve watched the number of free journalists shrink week by week.

Each time a colleague was arrested, my world became smaller, my voice a little more suffocated.

And one day I realized - it’s not only me who has been left without news; it’s an entire nation.

More than 10 million people in Azerbaijan now live silenced in their own country.

Most of the journalists who once told their stories are now behind concrete walls, like me.

This silence, this suffocating quiet — it is the government’s greatest weapon.

But I’ve seen that these walls cannot kill words.

Here, in secret, behind scraps of paper and the tips of pens, we found the breath of freedom. We kept writing.

And every time someone outside said "thank you," every time a problem was solved, or a prisoner’s life changed because of something I wrote - I understood that this profession, this mission, still lives.

The prison chief once told me, "No matter what you write, nothing will change."

But I saw that it does. Fear on people’s faces is being replaced by hope.

Journalism, even in prison, is the last fortress of freedom.

They sentenced me to silence - but I did not stay silent, and I never will.

Because when a journalist is silenced, the whole nation is silenced."