[governance] Concerns about hidden cameras in Azerbaijan hotel rooms

[Narine Khachatryan]

Dear all,

Here is another article about Azerbaijan on Times magazine:
(Read the story on
TIME.com<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2113835,00.html>
)


SELLING AZERBAIJAN AT EUROVISION
2012<http://williamleeadams.com/2012/05/04/selling-azerbaijan-at-eurovision-2012/>

by williamleeadams • Eurovision<http://williamleeadams.com/category/eurovision/>
, Politics <http://williamleeadams.com/category/politics/> • Tags:
2012<http://williamleeadams.com/tag/2012/>
, Azerbaijan <http://williamleeadams.com/tag/azerbaijan/>,
Eurovision<http://williamleeadams.com/tag/eurovision/>
, human rights <http://williamleeadams.com/tag/human-rights/>

Last May, Ell & Nikki, an obscure duo from Azerbaijan, won the 2011
Eurovision Song
Contest<http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2071522,00.html>.
The country’s President, Ilham Aliyev, treated the musical win like a
military triumph, describing it as “a victory for the people of Azerbaijan
and the Azerbaijani state.” By winning the pan-European singing
contest—which, kitschy as it is, unites the region like little
else—Azerbaijan’s capital city, Baku, earned the right to host this year’s
show, which will be broadcast to more than 100 million people at the end of
May.

Hosting Eurovision is a big deal for Azerbaijan, a sleepy ex–Soviet
republic of 9.5 million that sits on the geographic and political outskirts
of Europe. So Aliyev entrusted his glamorous wife Mehriban Aliyeva, who is
also a member of parliament, to organize the event. She’s overseen an
infrastructure upgrade, beautification projects around the city and the
rapid construction of the 23,000-seat Baku Crystal Hall, the Eurovision
venue that will feature 45,000 LEDs onstage and views of the Caspian Sea.
Like an insecure adolescent trying to get the cool kids to come to his
party, Baku is sparing no expense on Eurovision. Governments frequently
spend around $30 million to host the contest, but Azerbaijan has officially
budgeted $64 million, while journalists estimate the real figure is at
least $277 million. “We are very proud that we won Eurovision and are
honored that we have the chance to host this year,” says Fakhraddin
Gurbanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Britain. “It’s not only an
advertisement. It’s the introduction of our country to the world.”

(Read the story on
TIME.com<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2113835,00.html>
)

For Azerbaijan, a small country keen to distract the world from its poor
human-rights record,
Eurovision<http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1992889,00.html>
represents
the culmination of a global charm offensive. Although most people would
struggle to find it on a map, Azerbaijan has amassed impressive wealth in
the 20 years since it obtained independence from the Soviet Union. Its vast
oil and gas reserves helped push its real GDP up by 35% in 2006—making it
the fastest-growing country in the world for a time. Since then, the
economy has nearly tripled, to $62 billion, putting it on par with
countries like Oman.

Despite Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet economic success, international critics
say the country remains an autocracy with little respect for human rights.
Heydar Aliyev, the current President’s father, controlled Soviet Azerbaijan
as leader of the Communist Party, beginning in 1969, and assumed the
presidency in 1993 after a bloodless coup. He stood down in October 2003,
and two weeks later the younger Aliyev won a stacked election in a
landslide.

The new President abolished term limits via a widely disputed referendum in
2009. The Human Rights House Foundation <http://humanrightshouse.org/>
described
the country’s most recent elections in 2010 as a farce. Azeri citizens who
criticize the political elite face reprisal. According to Amnesty
International <http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=20012>,
police beat and imprisoned two musicians after they insulted the
President’s mother during their performance at a peaceful protest on March
17. Azeri authorities have ignored dozens of assaults on journalists in
recent years, including two murders. According to the Norwegian Helsinki
Committee, a human-rights NGO, about 70 people are in jail for political
reasons—where many are allegedly tortured. Transparency International
ranked Azerbaijan No. 143 out of 183 countries on its most recent
Corruption Perceptions Index.

Azerbaijan disputes these charges, claiming the country’s democracy is
still developing. Nonetheless, Aliyev is spending good money to ensure that
corruption, repression and autocracy aren’t the first words that come to
mind when you think about Azerbaijan. According to
Budget.az<http://www.budget.az/>—an
Azeri website run by a group of independent economic analysts—the
government of Azerbaijan spent at least $38 million promoting the country
abroad in 2011. That promotion includes passing out books on Azeri carpets
along with Azeri-branded USB drives to delegates at the recent World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland; opening Azeri Friendship Parks in
Mexico and Bosnia; and erecting a 220-ton, 162-m flagpole in Baku in May
2010. There are also commercials on CNN that show fashionable young women
shopping in Baku, and the official Eurovision website now includes a video
explaining Nowruz, the Azeri New Year celebration.

Azerbaijan isn’t the only country that spends liberally around the globe to
polish its international image. Belarus—which currently faces E.U.
sanctions over its human-rights abuses—previously paid the London public
relations firm Bell Pottinger to perform advocacy work and image
counseling. Kazakhstan, which led the U.S. State Department to express
concern over the arbitrary arrests and torture of prisoners, paid the
consulting firm BGR Gabara $45,000 a month for “outreach to government
officials, news outlets and other individuals in the United States.”

Azerbaijan, though, has been particularly eager to tap the expertise of
international p.r. firms. In September 2007, “the Presidency of Azerbaijan”
paid Jefferson Waterman International (JWI), a Washington-based political-
and business-consulting firm, $25,000 per month plus expenses for
“professional services.” That contract has ended, but JWI still represents
the International Bank of Azerbaijan—for the same fee—for services that
include “consultations with members of the Executive Branch and U.S.
Congress.”

In Europe, the particulars of such deals are hazier, but there’s little
doubt that Azerbaijan is riding a wave of good press. “Its wealth has
encouraged the inter­national community to buy into the myth of a young
democracy making slow and steady progress,” says John Dalhuisen, the
director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia program. Baku
has stronger support among politicians across Europe than its Central Asian
neighbors do, and the World Economic Forum recently ranked it as the most
competitive economy in the region. Last September, the acting U.S.
ambassador to Azerbaijan praised Baku for sharing “the benefits of oil and
gas … throughout society.” According to the World Bank, Azerbaijan has cut
poverty from 50% in 2001 to just 7.6% last year.

But Eurovision <http://wiwibloggs.com/>—and all the international attention
it will bring—may change the narrative. “They are moving toward the biggest
p.r. disaster in their entire history,” says Emin
Milli<http://eminmilli.posterous.com/>,
an Azeri political activist who was imprisoned for 18 months on charges of
hooliganism. “I do so many interviews with the press,” says Milli, who is
now a graduate student in London. “It’s like a full-time job now.”

*Friends in High Places*

Give Azerbaijan’s leaders this much: they’ve got ambition. Besides hosting
Eurovision, Azerbaijan is bidding for the 2020 Olympic Games. Last October
it won an election to become a temporary member of the U.N. Security
Council. And in April developers announced plans to build the world’s
tallest skyscraper, tentatively named the Azerbaijan Tower.

But the p.r. blitz isn’t merely about national pride. Azerbaijan hopes
respectability will help it secure international funding to build the
region’s largest petrochemical complex, which could be worth as much as $15
billion. Baku also hopes to win support in its ongoing conflict with
Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. As part of its
campaign, Azerbaijan is working with the London-based Leadership Agency, a
firm that helped Russia win its bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics. In a
meeting with Time, the agency’s representatives described democracy in
Azerbaijan as “a work in progress,” trumpeting the country’s economic
growth and commitment to secularism. They also emphasized the country’s
growing relationship with Israel as well as the imminent opening of a Four
Seasons hotel in Baku—the first in an ex-Soviet republic.

Azerbaijan has aggressively courted foreign politicians and dignitaries. In
2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted $143,000 for making
a 20-minute speech in Azerbaijan praising the opening of a methanol power
plant. State TV broadcast the press conference, and Blair later dined with
Aliyev. (Blair’s spokesman said the event was a “one-off speaking
engagement” and that the former Prime Minister has no commercial
relationship with Aliyev.) Prince Andrew, whom the Azeri media have
referred to as “the dear guest,” has visited Azerbaijan at least eight
times since 2005. He came under fire in March 2011 for encouraging an MP to
boost British business with Azerbaijan. Buckingham Palace defended the
Prince’s actions, telling the Guardian that Andrew—then serving as the
U.K.’s trade envoy—“tries to identify opportunities for British businesses
in overseas markets.” Michael Harris, head of advocacy at the Index on
Censorship <http://www.indexoncensorship.org/> and author of the
report *Azerbaijan’s
Image Problem*, says engaging with the West legitimizes Aliyev at home.
“Visits by European politicians are used to convince the people of
Azerbaijan that the government is a ‘normal’ European democracy that enjoys
good relations with its neighbors,” he says.

Baku also dispatches emissaries to hobnob with politicians in European
capitals. According to its own materials, the European Azerbaijan Society
(TEAS) exists “to promote Azerbaijan to international audiences,” and
Gurbanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador in London, claims the group “has nothing
to do with the government.” But according to U.S. embassy cables released
by WikiLeaks, TEAS’s “talking points very much reflect the goals and
objectives of the GOAJ [government of Azerbaijan].” Critics have also
raised questions about the group’s close relationship with European
politicians. Mark Field, a Tory MP and member of the British government’s
Intelligence and Security Committee, has accepted two trips to Azerbaijan
valued at more than $9,000. TEAS covered all expenses. Field also works as
a member of the advisory board of TEAS and has estimated that he received
between $8,000 and $16,000 from it over the past year. MPs can pursue
outside consultancy work as long as they declare any financial interests,
which Field has done. As someone with experience in energy and security,
Field says he is keen to “build links between our nations in areas of
shared interest.”

It’s true that about 5,000 U.K. nationals now work in Azerbaijan and that
Britain is the country’s largest foreign investor. But Field still raised
eyebrows in the House of Commons on Oct. 10 when he introduced a
parliamentary early day motion celebrating Azerbaijan’s achievements since
independence and wished “the country well on its path toward becoming a
fully fledged member of the community of European democratic states.” The
motion made no mention of the country’s human-rights record. “It’s
outrageous that lobbyists should be able to buy access and influence in a
way that they are clearly doing,” says Paul Flynn, a Labour MP. For his
part, Field tells Time he expressed his concerns about media restrictions
in Azerbaijan to the country’s senior ministers. He says economic and
diplomatic engagement is the best way to encourage genuine democracy.

Of particular concern to critics of Azerbaijan is its success in recruiting
former members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
(PACE)—the international body that appoints judges to the European Court of
Human Rights. Eduard Lintner, a former member of the German Bundestag,
served as chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly’s Committee on Legal
Affairs and Human Rights from 2002 to ’05. He now works for Berlin’s
Society for the Promotion of German-Azerbaijani Relations, a lobbying group
supported by Azerbaijan. Lintner told *Der Spiegel* that he resigned from
the Council of Europe partly because the body wanted to condemn alleged
human-rights violations rather than ushering Azerbaijan “along in a
supportive way.”

Gurbanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Britain, stresses that Lintner and
other similar officials no longer work for PACE. “They share our vision,
and that is why we are in close cooperation with them,” he says. “We
definitely need politicians who will support us in international
organizations.”

*Positive Press*

Politicians won’t fill up Baku’s luxury hotels on their own, so Azerbaijan
hopes to seduce potential tourists too. It speaks directly to foreigners
through journalists, who are drawn to Baku by over-the-top press junkets
that p.r. firms hand out like candy. In 2010, during one of the more lavish
outings, a group of 10 editors and writers from some of London’s biggest
magazines and newspapers flew on a private jet to Baku for the opening of
the city’s Chinar nightclub. The three-day tour included free-flowing
champagne, chauffeurs, gift bags full of caviar and a special performance
by British girl group the Suga­babes. “There was a sense that anything you
wanted, you could have,” one journalist says of the trip. “Nothing was
off-limits.” Four months after the Chinar trip, the Daily Mail—the most
powerful newspaper in Britain—ran an article by one of the travelers with
the headline “Amazing Azerbaijan: Baku to the future in the capital city at
the very edge of Europe.”

The puffery goes beyond print media. Last November, CNN—which, like Time,
is owned by Time Warner—ran a weeklong series of short segments called Eye
on Azerbaijan. It looked at the country’s carpets, folk music and cuisine,
explaining that Baku “might have an ancient heart, but it is getting a
remarkably modern face.” Nothing was reported about the country’s
human-rights problems, and Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism
paid for advertisements during the broadcasts. A CNN spokesman acknowledges
that Eye on Azerbaijan was a sponsored series but says the network retained
all editorial control and that CNN aired a story about Amnesty
International’s activities in the country as part of a separate news
program.

Surely there are limits to how many advertisements a single country can
buy—unless, of course, it runs a magazine of its own. That likely explains
Baku, a fashion-and-lifestyle magazine launched by Condé Nast in October.
Available globally, the magazine portrays Azerbaijan as a modern country in
sync with Western values, with lush photo spreads of models and celebrities
shot around the country’s landmarks. Edited by Leyla Aliyeva, the
President’s London-based daughter, the current issue includes 26 pages on
Eurovision—none of which mention that Emin Agalarov, the President’s
son-in-law, will perform as a special guest act during the contest’s live
broadcast.

*The Curtain Rises*

Ironically, Eurovision—meant to be Azerbaijan’s coming-out party—could end
up undermining the country’s expensively tended image. In recent weeks,
newspapers across Europe have reported on allegations by Human Rights Watch
that officials have un­lawfully evicted residents and demolished their
homes in the area surrounding Baku Crystal Hall, where Eurovision
rehearsals will begin on May 13. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU),
which oversees Eurovision, and Azeri authorities deny this. “They thought
Eurovision was another jewel in this propaganda crown,” says Dalhuisen of
Amnesty International. “It’s unraveling for them.”

For Aliyev, that criticism must sting, especially since his government has
already bowed to pressure from the EBU to ease some of its more repressive
policies during the contest. On April 22 the government sanctioned a
protest in Baku—only the second in seven years—during which opposition
groups called for Aliyev’s resignation, chanting, “Eurovision without
political prisoners.” “Euro­vision is shedding light on the darkness,” says
Milli, the activist. “The best way to expose injustice is to come to
Azerbaijan and make this the most subversive event in the history of
Eurovision.”

How Azerbaijan copes with 30,000 guests—including 1,500 journalists—during
the event will prove to be its greatest p.r. test. Even the First Lady
knows that. “The European song contest is a big and beautiful holiday for
some people but for others an occasion to organize political provocation,”
Aliyeva told Azeri reporters. “One must be prepared.”

Opponents might interpret that as a veiled threat. But authorities will
likely shy away from cracking down during the contest: international media
would beam any images of violence around the world instantly. That would
leave Azerbaijan out of tune with Eurovision—a contest founded to unite
Europe through song after the carnage of World War II. Literally speaking,
contestants don’t always manage to achieve harmony. This year’s acts
include an Austrian rap group performing its song “Shake Your Booty” and a
Cypriot songstress who is best heard in Auto-Tune. If the ideals of
Eurovision rub off on Baku, though, perhaps more Azeris will be able to use
their voices one day

 .

http://williamleeadams.com/2012/05/04/selling-azerbaijan-at-eurovision-2012/
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