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PR help international seemingly independent associations or societies - which are in fact front groups set up by the regimes - to host and organize events such as the first 2015 European Olympics in Azerbaijan while human rights are abused in the country by imprisoning journalists and campaigners, Corporate Europe Observatory states in its report about ‘‘how European PR firms whitewash repressive regimes.” It has been compiled taking into account the reports published by international organizations and media publications.

It is noted in the section dedicated to Azerbaijan that the Azerbaijani regime has spent large sums of money lobbying and building relations with politicians in the EU.

Controversially, in 2014 Azerbaijan held the Presidency of the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights body. Azerbaijan’s already abysmal human rights record further deteriorated during the 2013 Presidential election. Human rights activists, political opponents, and journalists were detained, beaten, and tortured. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) sent election monitors in 2013 who found “intimidation, the imprisonment of opposition figures, a lack of media freedom,” and concluded the “evidence of systemic fraud was overwhelming.”

As the report reads, lobbying organization The European Azerbaijan Society (TEAS) pays for EU politicians’ trips to Baku. A report by think tank the European Stability Initiative is also heavily critical of European politicians stating that many deputies are regularly invited to Azerbaijan and generously paid. In a normal year, at least 30 to 40 would be invited, some of them repeatedly. People are invited to conferences, events, sometimes for summer vacations. These are real vacations and there are many expensive gifts. Gifts are mostly expensive silk carpets, gold and silver items, drinks, caviar and money. In Baku, a common gift is 2 kg of caviar.

As a result, the presidential elections in Azerbaijan in 2013 were declared “free and transparent.” Still, the country has not had a competitive election since the father of the current President, Ilham Aliyev, came to power, and is one of the most corrupt in the world.

Olympic dreams CSM Strategic, the London-based consultancy for global sporting events worked on Baku’s bid to host the 2020 Olympic games. Although this bid ended in failure, the European Olympic Committee (EOC) has since awarded Baku the honor of hosting the very first European Games in 2015. The regime regards the success of the Games as a way to raise the country’s profile internationally. Yet the crackdown on human rights has escalated even further in the run up. Leading Azerbaijani human rights activists and journalists, who had called for a boycott of the Games, have been arrested, the report reads.

Glocal Communications, Brussels-based European affairs and strategic communications consultancy, announced that its biggest client for 2013 was the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Azerbaijan. In 2012 US PR company DCI Group signed a $20,000 a month contract for strategic media, PR, and outreach focusing on “Azerbaijan’s energy resources” and its strategic role as part of the “northern distribution network” that supplies US troops in Afghanistan.

Despite all this lobby spending, in September 2014 the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for targeted sanctions against Aliyev’s regime, as a result of increasing human rights abuses in the country. It also condemned in strong terms the fact that Azerbaijan held the Presidency of the Council of Europe during 2014.

Bankwatch.org, a website which monitors the activities of international financial institutions, writes in its turn that Europe talks of diversifying energy supplies by building a set of pipelines from the shores of Azerbaijan's Caspian Sea to Italy. But the EU's dependency on Azerbaijan for fossil energy fuels repression and feeds the authoritarian Aliyev regime. All the while, Europe does not need all that gas.

The European Parliament Member Marietje Schaake issued a press release on her website where she declared that on the eve of the first European Games in Baku in June 2015, on May 12 a hearing will be held in the European Parliament, which will raise attention towards Human Rights violations in the country, to call for a release of political prisoners before the games are taking place and to demand a political environment in accordance with European human rights standard.

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