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“Baku's Hospital Number 1 is an impressive building. It is immaculately clean and well equipped, a symbol of the modern state that oil-rich Azerbaijan wants to be. But upstairs in a hospital bed was another symbol of modern Azerbaijan - a badly injured journalist,” writes reporter for BBC Daniel Sandford in an article about persecution of activists in Azerbaijan.

“Idrak Abbasov was lying, struggling to breathe, with a bandage around his head, a large cotton pad over one eye, and a brace around his chest.

He had severe concussion, two broken ribs, and he was unsure if he would recover his eyesight.

He had been filming some people who were protesting against their homes being destroyed by the state oil company Socar.

Guards from the company had beaten him up, he said. They punched him, set about him with sticks and then kicked him on the ground,” BBC writes.

"I didn't expect them to beat me that much," he said. "They didn't just beat me, they wanted to kill me. If my brothers hadn't called the police, they probably would have killed me.

"We hoped that there wouldn't be such attacks before Eurovision.

"It has always been dangerous to be a journalist in Azerbaijan. Now the situation is deteriorating every day.

"I was beaten so heavily that even journalists from state companies called me, amazed at what happened. I can't imagine what they will do to us after Eurovision. There are not so many of us."

In theory Azerbaijan is a democracy, but life is made so difficult for opposition politicians and journalists that in the 2010 parliamentary elections not a single opposition deputy was elected.

Despite the Eurovision Song Contest this month, the ongoing clampdown on free speech includes musicians too, writes Sandford.

“Jamal Ali is a 24-year-old singer. His music is outside the Azerbaijani mainstream, and often strays into politics.

He was asked to play at a recent protest rally. His first song impolitely suggested that president Ilham Aliyev should "Go away."

The police decided he should be removed from the stage. At which point he insulted the president, and his mother, in the most foul-mouthed way he could.

He was arrested and taken to the police station where he says he was beaten,” the article says.

"They arrested me just because I have another opinion, I don't think like them, and I write songs about different stuff.

"I was freed from the jail after 10 days because of Eurovision. If there was no Eurovision I would have been in jail for two years or even five years."

One of the most controversial issues in Baku at the moment is the destruction of people's homes to make way for new developments, among them a new highway along the seafront, new hotels and shopping centres and a giant flagpole - the biggest in the world until nearby Turkmenistan built one even bigger.

Many people feel that the country's wealth is being controlled by a tiny elite, and with democracy now almost completely gone they have no say in the future of Azerbaijan, writes the author.