ACTIVISTS HOPE EUROVISION CONTEST WILL IMPROVE HUMAN RIGHTS IN AZERBAIJAN
by Stefan Niggemeier
Spiegel Online International
February 8, 2012 Wednesday 2:07 PM GMT+1
While the Azerbaijani government hopes to burnish its image
by hosting the Eurovision Song Contest in May, civil rights
activists are struggling to draw more attention to the country’s
human rights violations. Standing uncomfortably in the middle
are the organizers of this supposedly “apolitical” event.;
,1518,813822,00.html
The best view of the arena that will host the 2012 Eurovision Song
Contest (ESC) is from the 9th floor of an apartment building at 5 Agil
Guliyev Street. On the left is downtown Baku, the Azerbaijani capital,
with the renovated old-city walls and glittering new skyscrapers. Next
to it is the sweeping horizon of the Caspian Sea. National Flag Square,
where a giant Azerbaijani flag flies atop a 162-meter (531-foot)
flagpole, is directly in front of the building. The new arena, Baku
Crystal Hall, is being built at the end of a peninsula on the other
side of the square.
Still, there is no one to enjoy the view. It’s a stormy day in Baku,
nicknamed the “City of the Winds.” All the windows have been removed
from the walls on the building’s 9th floor, and debris is lying
everywhere. Small snowdrifts have formed in the corners. Families
lived there until recently, but now the entire floor is deserted. A
crane is standing next to the building, ready to be put to work. The
roof will probably be torn off soon, and then it will rain into the
apartments of the people living on the lower floors.
When residents walk up the stairs these days, they encounter smirking
young people armed with saws and drills. After they leave, residents
discover that something has changed. It might be a missing water pipe,
a bare power cable hanging in a hallway or a demolished wall. Some
residents suddenly find that their gas has been turned off. The
residents say the young people work for the city.
Indeed, it’s gotten dangerous to live in this building — but the
dangers are intentional. The government wants the remaining residents
to move out. In May, Baku expects thousands of visitors to attend the
ESC, the world’s largest non-sporting television even, which brings
singers from around Europe and farther afield together to compete for
the title. By then, a large thoroughfare and an elegant waterfront
boulevard will lead to Crystal Hall.
A Symbol of Official Mistreatment
As the last building standing in this location, 5 Agil Guliyev
Street has become a symbol. It embodies the ruthlessness with which
the city, spurred on by an oil boom, is transforming itself into a
grand metropolis modeled after cities in the West or, closer yet,
Dubai. It also symbolizes the arbitrariness of a corrupt country in
which rights often only exist on paper, as well as the ambivalent
role that an event like the Grand Prix of pop music plays when it
takes place under these conditions.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organizer of the song
contest, says that it isn’t responsible for what happens to the
apartment building. EBU officials insist that they didn’t ask anyone
to build new venues or to raze old buildings. In fact, they say, they
have only now approved Crystal Hall, on a site that was previously
wasteland, as the venue for the event. Besides, they add, the city
has shown them that the redevelopment plans that require tearing down
existing structures were made before Azerbaijan won the contest last
May, thereby securing the right to host this year’s contest.
Sietse Bakker, a 27-year-old Dutch entrepreneur and author of a
motivational book, is the spokesman for the European organizers.
Though he speaks with practiced composure and distances himself from
the controversy, he also ends up sounding like somewhat of a spokesman
for the Azerbaijani government when he says that the people being
forced to relocate are being fairly compensated.
But not everyone shares this view. Granted, those who still live in the
building say they aren’t fighting to be able to stay there. But, says
Zadir Gulamirov, a retired army captain, “We just want the compensation
the law entitles us to.” His wife, Kadiya, then adds, “For the money
they’re offering, we can’t find an apartment we can live in.”
The residents have copied documents that they say testify to their
rights. They explain how the size of their apartments were incorrectly
calculated. With anger and sometimes tears in their eyes, they
describe their petitions, letters and complaints — and the refusal
of law-enforcement and court officials to do anything at all.
Of course, forced evictions under dubious circumstances are not a
phenomenon that has only arrived in Baku with the ESC. But the event
has further intensified the time pressure and the mistreatment of
residents, says Rachel Denber, the deputy director of the Europe
and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. “The EBU should be
public about concerns about abuses relating to the evictions and get
assurances from the Azerbaijani authorities that they will halt all
further expropriations, evictions and demolitions in the vicinity
until they can be carried out in a fair and transparent manner
and are consistent with Azerbaijani national law and Azerbaijan’s
international commitments.”
Jorg Grabosch, the head of Brainpool, the German company that will
produce the giant television show for the Azerbaijanis, has nothing
but praise for the speed at which the arena is being built. “The loss
of the buildings isn’t a tragedy,” he says, suggesting that the gray
apartment towers didn’t look pretty anyway.
Eroding Freedoms
Winning the right to host the event was important to Azerbaijan. With
the support of Mehridan Aliyeva, the wife of President Ilham Aliyev,
the country took a professional approach to producing songs that
would appeal to European audiences. For the authoritarian regime —
which opposition members describe as a “mafia” — it is a coup that
makes an impression on the Azerbaijani people and boosts national
pride in a country that only regained its independence 20 years ago,
after seven decades as a Soviet republic.
In describing the image Azerbaijan wants to project to the world,
Mikhail Jabbarov, a former member of the government and current adviser
to the pro-government television station Ictimai, which will broadcast
this year’s song contest, calls it “a modern, secular country that
is proud of its roots.”
Of course, whether this assessment holds true depends in large part on
whether one defines modernity as not only involving Western-style urban
development and consumption, but also the rights of free expression
and free assembly.
The Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders ranks
Azerbaijan in 162nd place out of the 179 countries on its Press
Freedom Index. Activists and independent journalists are subject to
repression. Broadcasters, such as the BBC and Radio Liberty, were
forced to give up their radio frequencies three years ago. Likewise,
the government responded harshly to protests in the spring of 2011. In
fact, according to Human Rights Watch, despite the country’s efforts
to burnish its international image, the human rights situation has
deteriorated over the last year.
Suppression of Activist and Journalists
Leyla Yunus is an institution in the country. She has been fighting
for civil rights in Azerbaijan since the days of the Soviet Union.
“Things are getting worse and worse,” she says matter-of-factly.
“There is no respect for the law and no respect for morality.” Yunus
is a petite, determined woman, but her eyes seem moist and glassy. She
has been fighting depression, she says, since the authorities tore
down her office last year. She wasn’t there when it happened, but
everything was destroyed — especially the fighting spirit of her
and others. “After that,” she says, “many people said: ‘What can we
expect from her if she can’t even protect her own offices?'”
Local civil rights activists say the government derives its power by
employing intimidation and fear tactics. This is one of the reasons
why Emin Huseynov, of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety
(IRFS), is reluctant to view the recent releases of a number of
jailed journalists as an indication that the government is taking
their rights more seriously.
Huseynov says many journalists have learned their lesson and are
now practicing self-censorship. “There is an opposition newspaper
that is allowed to call the president a dictator,” he says. “But
that doesn’t pose a threat to the government. It would be dangerous,
however, if journalists started investigating his family’s fraudulent
business dealings.”
For the government, Huseynov adds, the ESC is an “expensive toy
it’s using to improve its image.” However, civil rights activists
are not calling for a boycott. Instead, they are trying a strategy
that embraces the event — in part to avoid triggering a negative
response from the population, which is looking forward to the
spectacle. Their “Sing for Democracy” campaign aims to take advantage
of the international attention surrounding the event so as to draw
the attention of the outside world to the abysmal realities behind
the attractive facade.
A Supposed Smear Campaign
In January, Markus Loning, the German government’s human rights
commissioner, wrote letters to the participants in the German
pre-selection show and to the jury headed by prominent entertainer
Stefan Raab, asking them to publicly campaign for human rights in
Azerbaijan. “If Stefan Raab did this, it would make an impact and
reach completely different people,” Loning says. “There is now a
political window of opportunity that we have to take advantage of.”
Thomas Schreiber, the entertainment coordinator for the German public
broadcaster ARD and, as such, something akin to Germany’s manager
for ESC-related events, takes a more dismissive view of Loning’s
activities. “The human rights commissioner is trying to use the ESC
to draw attention to himself,” he says.
Still, Loning has at least managed to capture the attention of the
pro-government press in Azerbaijan. A few weeks back, the Azeraijani
newspaper SES called him a “drunk,” characterized him as a puppet of
the country’s archenemy, Armenia, and accused him of having an affair
with Leyla Yunus.
The next day, the ESC’s Azerbaijani and international organizers gave
a memorable press conference at the Baku Business Center. When some
journalists openly asked questions about the rights of gays, lesbians
and political prisoners, some local journalists reacted with outrage
and hurled accusations at those asking the questions. One woman even
asked the EBU representatives what they intended to do about what
she called “black PR,” the smear campaign that organizations like
the BBC are allegedly waging against Azerbaijan.
Standing at the podium, Jon Ola Sand, the Norwegian ESC Executive
Supervisor, noted almost patronizingly: “Every comment and every
question is welcome here because that’s the role of the free press.”
A Difficult Balancing Act
Indeed, the EBU is trying to perform a balancing act. It stresses that
the song contest is an “apolitical” event, and it categorically refuses
to openly criticize the regime. In a press release, it refers to its
“values” and how it fundamentally stands up for freedom of expression,
while at the same time noting that the song contest — formerly known
as the Eurovision Grand Prix — was also held in Spain in 1969 under
the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
The logic is simple: Organizers believe the ESC is a positive event
that has a positive impact. “We’re the good ones,” Sand says, and he
seems incredulous when confronted with the charge that, in a country
like Azerbaijan, the ESC could not only be part of the solution,
but also part of the problem.
ARD entertainment coordinator Schreiber also believes in the event’s
positive impact. He invokes the famous words of “change through
rapprochement” that West German politician Egon Bahr used in the 1970s
to describe the new openness toward the East German regime at the
time. “Of course Azerbaijan doesn’t just want to stage a good show,
but also to improve the country’s image,” Schreiber says. “But the
attention of journalists can’t be controlled. They won’t just report
on the ESC, but also on matters involving criticism.”
In fact, the EBU has received guarantees from the Azerbaijani
government that it will allow unrestricted reporting — for Eurovision
guests. But what ordinary Azerbaijanis will get from having such
freedoms in events surrounding the ESC is a different matter.
Schreiber believes that once people are exposed to freedoms such as
open press conferences, they won’t be quite as willing to relinquish
them once the event is over.
Still, civil rights activist Huseynov can also imagine that the
government could become “quite furious” about the criticism and
“seek revenge” after the ESC leaves Baku. Though he fears that the
government will not change, he hopes that society will learn to fight
despotism more effectively.
Whatever happens, during the ESC, there will probably be a flowerbed
where the building at 5 Agil Guliyev Street now stands. Later on,
perhaps another hotel could be built at the site. The views would
be fantastic.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0