My fiancee stood by Voice of America. America must stand by her.
The Hill · C · trust 37/100
Comments: by Ramin Guluzada, opinion contributor - 07/17/26 11:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Ramin Guluzada, opinion contributor - 07/17/26 11:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied FILE- This is the Voice of America building in Washington D.C., on May 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File) My fiancee, Ulviyya Ali, bravely reported on Azerbaijan’s human rights abuses for Voice of America for years. This made her a target of the Azerbaijani government. Today, she sits in prison , silenced and cut off from the outside world.
The U.S. has the power to help restore her freedom. The question is, does it have the will?
Since the founding of Voice of America, the U.S. government entrusted it with a clear mission : “telling audiences the truth.” Ulviyya has always believed deeply in this mission, even at great personal risk. In Azerbaijan, a country that ranks among the Top 10 most repressive regimes for press freedom, she reported on flagrant human rights abuses, filling a vital role as one of the country’s last remaining independent journalists.
Ulviyya was willing to take these risks, in part, because she believed she was not alone in her fight for truth. She trusted the free press principles Voice of America stands for and believed that, if those values came under attack, America would not look away.
Following President Trump’s March 2025 executive order to effectively shutter Voice of America, the U.S. government has stayed silent while Ulivyya has been locked away inside an Azerbaijani prison. It stayed silent when she was repeatedly beaten by prison guards and threatened with rape.
Ulviyya has now spent more than a year in prison on fabricated charges , including “smuggling” foreign currency and “money laundering.” She faces a sentence of up to 20 years if found guilty. Yet the U.S. government has yet to issue a statement, and the agency overseeing Voice of America, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, has yet to undertake any meaningful steps to secure her release.
Voice of America’s founding figures understood that its mission could only be fulfilled by committed journalists like Ulivyya. And when the inconvenient truth put its journalists in danger, the agency and the U.S. government stood with them.
In 2009, they both worked to secure the release of Voice of America reporter Mohammed Yasin Isahaq from a Somali prison. In 2022, Voice of America condemned the assault and brief detention of its journalist Godwin Mangudya in Zimbabwe and, alongside the U.S. government, pressed for the release of its journalist Diing Magot in South Sudan.
There are even examples of the U.S. intervening on behalf of Voice of America journalists in Azerbaijan, who risked everything to tell the truth. When Khadija Ismayilova, an award-winning investigative journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijani Service, was arrested in 2014 on politically motivated charges, the U.S. government responded with sustained, coordinated pressure. U.S. Agency for Global Media board members and network executives pushed her case into the public eye. Congressional hearings called for targeted sanctions against Azerbaijani officials. The State Department raised her case directly as part of its bilateral relationship with Baku. In May 2016, following nearly two years of sustained American pressure, she was released .
If the U.S. government stays silent while Ulviyya remains locked away, it would send a message far beyond Azerbaijan. It would call into question America’s credibility abroad and, further, would be a statement about the value the U.S. places on the people who risk their lives to carry its messages.
I cannot stay silent while the woman I love sits behind bars. I have knocked on every door I could, reached out to her colleagues and friends, and international nongovernmental organizations. I have sought help wherever it might be found.
U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), have spoken out in her defense , and both Ulviyya and I are deeply grateful for this support. But two statements are not enough on their own. She needs the full weight of the U.S. government: the kind of pressure that can move mountains, and that Aliyev’s regime in Azerbaijan cannot ignore.
The State Department should speak loudly and clearly, naming Ulviyya’s case in public statements and raising it in every bilateral engagement with Azerbaijan. Congress should consider targeted sanctions against officials responsible for Ulviyya’s detention and abuse. And the U.S. Agency for Global Media should publicly advocate for her release with the same strength and urgency it demonstrated in previous cases involving journalists promoting the American values of truth and freedom of the press.
Ulviyya warned me early on that loving a journalist in Azerbaijan is not easy, and that she might be imprisoned one day. I fell in love anyway with her optimism, her courage and her unshakeable belief that journalism could expose injustice and that the world would respond.
She is still writing from prison. She interviews other inmates. She documents her conditions with the precision she brought to every story she filed. She told me she is proud to be there, because she has always stood with the oppressed and those whose voices the regime has tried to silence.
I believe her. But I also want her home.
We lived together for only two weeks as an engaged couple. More than a year later, I want to say “I love you” at home again. not just in court or in prison. I need America’s help to bring her back.
Ramin Guluzada’s fiancee, Ulviyya Ali, has been detained in Azerbaijan since May 6, 2025. She reported for Voice of America. Press freedom organizations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, have called for her immediate release.
Read the original at The Hill →
Open in TruthVane →