Why We Exist — And Why We Need You

In the autumn of 2017, police in Baku began rounding up gay and transgender people off the streets.

Dozens were detained. They were held without charge, beaten, and in some cases forced to provide names of others. It was a coordinated hunt — and it happened almost entirely in silence. No Azerbaijani newspaper covered it. No television channel reported it. State media said nothing.

We did.

Minority was the only media outlet in Azerbaijan that went looking for the people who had been detained. We found them. We listened to them. We connected them with lawyers. We helped get their stories to international journalists. And we helped submit their cases to the European Court of Human Rights.

Without that coverage, those people would have had no voice, no legal recourse, and no record that what happened to them happened at all.

We are Minority Azerbaijan — the first and only LGBTQ+ magazine in Azerbaijan. We started in 2015, built this website, and created a platform where queer people in Azerbaijan can find information, read their own stories told honestly, and access psychological and legal support.

Over a million people visit our site every year — from Baku, from the diaspora, from across the world. They come looking for themselves.

We don't have paywalls. Everything we publish is free.

But the work is not free. Reporting costs time. Security costs money. Keeping this platform online, keeping our journalists safe, being able to plan the next story — that requires support we do not yet have enough of.

If you believe this work should exist, please support it.

A few euros or dollars a month is enough. You won't get exclusive content — just the knowledge that the next time something happens, we will still be here to document it.

— The Minority team

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