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Rights Groups Seek Eurovision Boycott Over Host Azerbaijan

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  • Rights Groups Seek Eurovision Boycott Over Host Azerbaijan

    RIGHTS GROUPS SEEK EUROVISION BOYCOTT OVER HOST AZERBAIJAN

    The Irish Times
    Saturday, March 31, 2012

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    caseDANIEL McLAUGHLIN

    EUROPE'S BIGGEST human rights organisations have criticised calls
    for a boycott of May's Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan, while
    noting concerns about civil liberties in the country.

    International campaign groups have reproached Azerbaijan this month for
    the sometimes violent arrest of protesters, journalists and musicians
    who joined or reported on demonstrations against the authorities,
    adding weight to appeals for a boycott from some Azeri dissidents.

    Human Rights Watch has also accused Azerbaijan of forcibly evicting
    dozens of families from areas that are being redeveloped before
    Eurovision.

    Reporters Without Borders, meanwhile, has condemned what it called a
    "despicable" smear campaign against a journalist who says intimate
    images of her were posted online to deter her from investigating
    corruption among Azerbaijan's ruling elite.

    The Continent's foremost rights and democracy watchdogs - the Council
    of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
    - oppose a boycott of Eurovision, however.

    "I am concerned with the situation in Azerbaijan regarding freedom of
    expression, but the Eurovision Song Contest is an opportunity to have
    a debate and raise these concerns," Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary
    general of the 47-nation Council of Europe, told The Irish Times.

    Sitting alongside him at the Vienna headquarters of the 56-state OSCE
    - which Ireland is chairing this year - was the group's like-minded
    media freedom chief, Dunja Mijatovic.

    "We should not be closing doors. On the contrary, our organisations
    should be door-openers in a society where we see problems. Any boycott
    would be a restriction of free speech from the other side," she said.

    "Azerbaijan is high on the agenda of my office," she added. "We
    do have concerns and there are problems on a daily basis, there is
    harassment on a daily basis." Azerbaijan ranks 152nd of 178 nations
    in a media freedom list compiled by Reporters Without Borders, which
    also calls President Ilham Aliyev a "predator of press freedom".

    He has run the ex-Soviet state since the death in 2003 of his father
    Heydar Aliyev, who dominated Azeri politics for decades. Despite
    persistent complaints about rigged elections and human rights
    violations, the oil-rich state bordering on Russia, Iran and Turkey
    enjoys good relations with the West.

    Azerbaijan and neighbouring Armenia fought a war in the early 1990s
    over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly ethnic-Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan.

    They are still at odds over the region, and Armenia has already
    withdrawn from the May 22nd-26th Eurovision.

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