RTVi: Baku hosts glamour festivals to assert itself on world stage with European sports officials deaf to criticism
On June 12, the first-ever European Games will kick off in Azerbaijan -- featuring 50 nations competing in 30 sports over two weeks. As world leaders gather to celebrate the games, their host Azerbaijan remains one of the ten most censored countries in the world and continues a brutal crackdown on dissent, RFE/RL writes.
According to RFE/RL, Azerbaijan has nearly 100 political prisoners--journalists, activists, and human rights defenders jailed on politically motivated charges--including investigative journalist and RFE/RL contributor Khadija Ismayilova, who marked her sixth month in pretrial detention just days before the games are set to begin.
The Azerbaijani government and media have trumpeted this success as the greatest thing since the hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012. These events, while instilling patriotic pride in some members of the citizenry as well as highlighting the city may not be worth the expense, Joshua Noonan writes for Silk Road Reporters.
As with other mega-projects such as the Olympics or the World Cup, the investments often do not pay off and simply are an expensive, evanescent carnival and bacchanalia of spending. Currently, the official cost of the European Games stands at $1.2 billion. These numbers are highly disputed as the Olympic Stadium, the main venue of the event, cost $600 million. Combined with the infrastructure costs, it is estimated that the total cost totals to nearly $10 billion. In the light of the oil price drop and the massive currency devaluation as well as the recent inferno exacerbated by the facades placed on buildings to cover their Soviet carapaces, many in Azerbaijan are starting to resent the expense and burden of the games. Meanwhile, $2.5 billion of the European Game’s revenue will be distributed to the participating national Olympic committees and related sports federations while Azerbaijan is paying the majority of costs of transport and housing for participants, according to Noonan.
While one of the intentions of the European Games to raise Azerbaijan’s profile, it is the structural issues as well as a lack of broad-based political support and facilitation within Azerbaijan that remain the major hindrance to investment, trade-flows, and tourism. Currently, Azerbaijan ranks 166th on the most current Doing Business report from the World Bank. According to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Azerbaijan’s poorer neighbors Armenia and Georgia have the same or higher levels of infrastructure development for railways, roads, urban transport, and water, Noonan highlights.
He further points that this is all despite the fact that Azerbaijan has been riding its second oil boom for more than a decade. While the government continues on with talk of diversification, these issues according to the EBRD “were largely limited to fiscal and credit incentives, rather than improving the business environment and ensuring a level playing field.” While the well-wishers of Azerbaijan hope for a repeat of the highly noteworthy 1992 Barcelona Olympics in Baku, the European Game’s investment scorecard shows too much glitter and too little substance.
According to a video posted on RTVi TV channel’s website, Baku asserts itself on the world stage with the help of continent-wide glamour festivals. The international sports officials are often deaf and blind to everything but the finances of the host country. FIFA’s decision to hold the Football World Cup in Qatar or IOC choosing Beijing and Sochi come to prove this.
According to the video, the post-Soviet republic has taken more than seriously to the preparations. The quickly developing country -- due to the possession of oil and gas fields – promises to hold the games on the highest level. While the athletes from around the world are getting ready for the prestigious competition, human rights defenders issue critical reports and showcase the problems not related to sport. Particularly, Human Rights Watch broke out with a statement demanding that the European Olympic Committees raise the issue of the human rights violations in Azerbaijan.
Muzaffar Suleymanov from New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists studies the situation in Europe and Central Asia. He says there is no freedom of speech in Azerbaijan. “In total, press freedom is in horrible plight in Azerbaijan. Over the past 5 years, our organization Committee to Protect Journalists has first registered such a leap with so many journalists in jail and such an intensification of repressions,” Suleymanov told RTVi.
In a recent report, Freedom House said that speech freedom deteriorates annually in Azerbaijan. The country ranks the leading positions in the anti-rating of the organization. As Baku is getting ready for the games – which are certainly organized and will be held at the highest level – Amnesty International counted 20 political prisoners and demands their release before the games begin.
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