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It’s of deep concern that a conference on internet freedom is being held in one of the world’s most tawdry dictatorships, writes Mike Harris, Head of Advocacy at Index on Censorship, according to The Telegraph.

“For Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev, the hosting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Baku is yet another propaganda coup in a year marked by the Eurovision Song Contest and the launch of Azerbaijan’s bid for Baku to host the 2020 Olympic Games. The regime is slick – it spent an estimated $500 million on Eurovision alone, hires the smoothest spin doctors, and takes British MPs on all expenses paid trips to see “the real Azerbaijan” (as opposed to the Azerbaijan where their Parliament contains not a single opposition MP),” writes the author.

According to the author, Azerbaijan is also a country with a track record of persecuting internet activists, such as bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizada.

“Elnur Majidli, a Strasbourg-based blogger and internet activist, was threatened with a 12 year jail sentence for "inciting hatred" after setting up Facebook groups that facilitated rare public protests in Azerbaijan during 2011. Because of his online activism, police officers turned up at his family home. His father was held for eight hours by the police, then swiftly lost his job in the state shipping firm Caspar, all because his son set up a Facebook group. Majidli junior cannot return to Azerbaijan,” writes Harris.

The article says that state TV broadcasts programmes that allege Facebook and Twitter cause criminality among Azerbaijan’s young people. Just last year, the country’s chief psychiatrist warned that social media caused mental disorders.

“This is the country that will host the IGF (a United Nations initiative) and help set the framework for the future of internet freedom. While a bitter irony for brave people like Majidli, it’s more worryingly symbolic,” says the author.

As the Arab Spring has shown, writes the author, the internet is helping to free people across the world from the iron grip of autocracy. The leaking of cables by Tunisian dissident website Nawaat exposed the corruption of former President Ben Ali and helped topple his dictatorship. The internet made it easier than ever before for activists from across the Middle East to organise during the Arab Spring, hence the former Egyptian government attempting to hold back the revolutionary tide by turning it off.

“So it’s of deep concern that the Internet Governance Forum, one the most important global conferences on internet freedom, is being held in Azerbaijan – one of the world’s most tawdry dictatorships,” writes Harris.