Nul points
More care should be taken over where to hold international pageants
May 26th 2012 | from the print edition
..
ON THE face of it, Ilham Aliev, the president of Azerbaijan, and the
Eurovision Song Contest, held in his country this week, are a good
fit. Eurovision, in which viewers across Europe (broadly defined)
select a winning song from competing national entries, is an annual
festival of kitsch. Mr Aliev’s fondness for opulence, his strongman
moustache, and the cult of personality he has built around his father,
Heidar, from whom he inherited his post in 2003, are all suitably
retro. Alas, his regime also has some less amusing traits, which
suggest that the organisers of shindigs like Eurovision should be more
careful about where they are staged (see article).
The story behind the songs is a sad one. Protests against Mr Aliev’s
rule, especially after the rigged elections that keep him in power,
are routinely crushed. His critics have been beaten and imprisoned.
Not only do Azerbaijan’s human-rights abuses make a grim backdrop to
the clowning of Eurovision: some have been perpetrated on its account.
According to human-rights groups, scores of families have been
forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for a new concert hall.
Absurdly but terrifyingly, in previous Eurovisions Azerbaijanis were
interrogated for voting for Armenia – the Caucasian neighbour with which
Azerbaijan fought a war in the 1990s and may yet fight another. The
lavish cost of the preparations is itself obscene in a place where
many lack basic amenities, despite the gridlock of imported cars in
central Baku, the capital. But then, Azerbaijan scores the full 12
points for corruption.
The wealth of a favoured few in Azerbaijan derives from oil and gas,
pumped out of the Caspian and through a pipeline to Turkey. Along with
the country’s sensitive location – between Russia and Iran – the oil helps
explain the West’s often indulgent attitude to Mr Aliev. Yet the
indulgence must have a limit. Eurovision should have been beyond it.
Politics by other means
A similar awkwardness recently arose over a more important tournament,
the forthcoming European football championship, and a bigger country,
Ukraine, its co-host. Commendably, some diplomats are refusing to turn
up unless Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister now imprisoned on
doubtful charges, is treated humanely. A long time has elapsed since
Ukraine, with Poland, was awarded the football tournament in 2007: the
intervening years have seen it not only build stadiums, but also lapse
from a struggling but hopeful democracy into a darker place.
Eurovision presents a different problem. Azerbaijan is host because it
won last year’s contest – somewhat unfortunately, in light of Mr Aliev’s
reputation, the victorious song was entitled `Running Scared’.
That rule should be changed. The bodies that oversee these
extravaganzas are avowedly non-political; they argue that such
contests promote international goodwill. But they become political
tools, nonetheless. Although stable, democratic countries often
approach them with wry amusement, for nasty leaders such as Mr Aliev
these spectacles are valuable propaganda: Eurovision, the biggest
thing in Azerbaijan since it became independent in 1991, has been
presented as a diplomatic imprimatur. More discretion, for example
relying on independent human-rights data, should be used in allocating
them. Eurovision would have done more to further peace and fraternity
if Azerbaijan had been refused the right to be the host until its
government upheld those values.
http://www.economist.com/node/21555919