Eurovision: Azerbaijan's Three Days of Fame

Sabina Babayeva is not the only Azerbaijani singer preparing for Eurovision. The government apparently has a song to sing, too, and it's called (with apologies to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe) "Just You Wait."

Sick of what they term international media and rights groups' "politicization" of Eurovision, officials say that when Europe drops by Azerbaijan on May 22 for three days of pop and glamour, visitors will see for themselves that Azerbaijan is up to snuff on all fronts.

“Tourists and visitors to Azerbaijan will be able to personally make sure that Azerbaijani society is tolerant . . .Political pluralism, human rights have been fully ensured,” declared Ali Hasanov, head of the presidential administration's public and political policy department.

Azerbaijanis are wonderfully hospitable people and Baku is, in fact, looking dazzling these days. With glittering new buildings, fancy illuminations along the Caspian Sea, squeaky clean streets, and London-style taxi cabs, the oil-and-gas wealth is written all over the place.

But while the Eurovision song contest, perhaps the biggest international attention-grabber for Azerbaijan since the Nagorno-Karabakh war, has inspired an impressive overhaul of Baku, it has not led to a "remont" of Azerbaijan's civil rights record.

Report after report in recent months has focused on how, behind the snazzy buildings, the ruling elite has literally beat political dissent and free media into a corner.

Hasanov writes down such criticism to scheming by enemies of the state; most of all neighboring Armenia, the source of all evil. When German officials and media took jabs at Azerbaijan, Baku dismissed the attack as, well, fascist.  

The “norms of Azerbaijan civil society do not lag behind European ones," he asserts. And to prove it -- presumably -- dozens of government officials made a surprise appearance at a May 16 discussion on media rights in Baku organized by the Eurovision protest group Sing for Democracy.

There, they informed us that it's a "violation of privacy" to expose a conflict of interest between First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva both heading Azerbaijan's Eurovision committee and being an owner of a company that worked on the construction of Eurovision's main venue. One, apparently, just as bad as the smear campaign launched a few months ago against the journalist, Khadija Ismayilova (who works for EurasiaNet.org as well as RFE/RL), who uncovered the discrepancy.

Pro-government media reportedly brought up the rear by questioning Ismayilova's private life; already a tactic used in the smear campaign.

Are these really European norms?

Arguably, the Azerbaijani government could have taken a tenth of the effort away from the national home improvement campaign and applied it to the civil liberties front. Then, Baku may have impressed both visitors and residents . . . and not just visually.