Eurovision in the "borderline situation"

A simplified visa regime for participants and guests of the "Eurovision 2012” introduced  on April 15 in Azerbaijan   has been removed from the agenda of the debate between official Baku and European countries one of the questions of "democratic aura" of the international song contest.

The power established a moratorium on the strict visa regime introduced on the eve of parliamentary elections in 2010 only for the contest time. Now everyone can get a visa on arrival at the international airports of Azerbaijan.

This will be sufficient to foreign journalists to observe easily not only the course of the contest, but also to show millions of viewers around the world the glossy and matte side of a controversial life of the country.

A young state which boasts with its petrodollars has been closed in recent years to those who have tried to show the unpleasant side of life - poverty, corruption, violation of human rights, freedom of speech and other basic values ​of a democratic Europe.

History remembers that many foreign journalists and observers were not able to cross the border of Azerbaijan during the 2010 parliamentary elections, that facilitated the falsification of the votes.

Last year, the practice continued and was marked by expulsion from the country of Swedish journalists who dared to cover an unauthorized opposition rally in Baku on 2 April.

Release from prison of participants of this action is one of the most important conditions for participation in the contest put forward by European countries.  Eighteen activists of civil society have been imprisoned only for the attempt to take advantage of the constitutional and statutory right to the freedom of assembly.

International human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as leading Western media have begun to pay more attention to the back of the Azerbaijani reality, which is manifested in the stories where the wealthy elite and the poor in the slums, the high-rise buildings and the taking of homes from ordinary citizens, grotesquely oppose each other.

As we approach the competition, the authorities are frantically trying to neutralize the negative, more often projected on the pages of the foreign press and TV channels, such as CNN, CNBC, and ARD. The Press Council clumsily chided foreign journalists, urging them to pay more attention to developing the glowing success of the state.   But the information balance portrayed by the campaign "Sing in the name of democracy" which is trying to create a Union of Azerbaijani democratic institutions, reveals the problems of democracy. "Sing in the name of democracy" wants to draw international attention to the violations of human rights, freedom of speech and private property rights.

Foreign journalists have not responded to the appeal of the Press Council, which can be regarded as an extension of the line "a song in a political context" with the further destruction of an image of the "broadly walking" Azerbaijan.

Although the authorities agreed to a temporary introduction of a simplified visa regime and allowed the opposition to hold rallies on the outskirts of the capital, at the same time, they demonstrate the intransigence of increasing pressure. Seven journalists are in prison, and the illegal destruction of private property has been recently carried out with even greater ferocity.

Probably, it is not hard to predict that such a contradictory position of the parties will lead to a "borderline situation", the culmination of which will be on the eve of the Eurovision in the first half of May with two different outcomes: either the authorities demonstrate another goodwill gesture, or a holiday song will be broken by the champions of democracy. No one needs the latter option, and it already draws a favorable outcome for the contest and Democracy.