Baku Olympics and criticism of “professional experts”

Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza

Considering publications of the Azerbaijani mass media, Baku is indignant at attempts by some Georgian experts and journalists to associate the holding of the 2015 European Olympic Games with “Leila Yunus’s case.” Some of them even call for a boycott or cancellation of the Games by the International Olympic Committee.

Next year Tbilisi also will hold an important sporting event – the Youth Olympic Festival, which is often called “the Youth Olympics.” The Georgian capital won the right in 2010 after tough competition with other European capitals. Despite serious problems with human rights in Georgia, nobody called for a boycott, including experts of international human rights organizations.

One of the most devoted supporters of boycotting the 2015 Baku Olympics is a reporter on the South Caucasus countries of Human Rights Watch, Georgy Gogia. In general he is not a well-known expert in the country. He is rarely to be seen on local TV, Tbilisi newspapers and information agencies don’t interview him much. His media activity could be seen during the dreadful story of tortures of prisoners, which led to the change of power in 2012.

However, it should be noted that Gogia criticizes not only Azerbaijan, but also Armenia and Georgia for their situations with human rights. For example, he criticizes the Georgian authorities for violation of equal rights of religions, rights of sexual minorities, and for interference of special services in the private lives of citizens. Armenia is criticized for incidents of excessive use of force by the police.

In one of his interviews, Georgy Gogia admitted that in some aspects of following human rights Azerbaijan is better than Georgia. For example, according to him, the maximum term of administrative arrest in Azerbaijan is 15 days, while in Georgia it is 90!

But this doesn’t comfort Azerbaijan. Mr. Gogia and his colleagues don’t call for a boycott of the 2015 Tbilisi Youth Olympics, despite human rights problems in their country. So this phenomenon could influence Azerbaijani-Georgian relations, which seemed to be perfect.

Before joining Human Rights Watch, Georgy Gogia worked as a senior analyst of the International Crisis Group on conflicts in the South Caucasus over Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. He graduated from the Central European University and is now working at Ilya Tbilisi University.

Of course an expert of HRW is paid for criticism. Human Rights Watch is one of the mechanisms of providing a general strategy of the West on spreading its values and the education of elites which are loyal to their values. However, it is difficult to say that calling for a boycott of the Olympics is required by the HRW charter. Maybe the organization is practicing such politicization of sporting and cultural events.

The main thing is that officials of Georgia or sporting officials and athletes have nothing in common with the urging of boycotting the Baku Games. Everybody is interested in successfully holding both the Youth Olympics in Tbilisi and the European Games in Baku. Vestnik Kavkaza was told about it by all structures: from the state office of Irakly Garibashvili’s government and the presidential administration of Georgy Margvelashvili to the National Olympic Committee and the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs.

All of them told Vestnik Kavkaza that they don’t know Gogia; Georgia supports Baku in holding the Olympics, and we hope that our Azerbaijani friends will support Tbilisi in holding the Youth International Festival.

And nobody believes that HRW is able to worsen relations between Georgia and Azerbaijan.