By Orkhan Sattarov, exclusively to VK
A six-hour-long discussion on media freedoms in Azerbaijan was held in Geneva on May 2. An official delegation from Baku headed by the chief manager of the socio-political connections department of the Presidential Administration, Ali Gassanov, took part in the debates. The top management of the European Broadcasting Union as well as Azerbaijani and international human rights organizations were also present. The discussion is said to have passed in a constructive tone. The EBU representatives stressed that they are not ‘policing’ the member-states of the Union and that they see the best chance of improving the situation not in pressuring governments but in cooperating with them.
However, the members of the ‘Freedom and Safety for Reporters’ organization, which is close to the Azeri opposition, made a much harsher assessment of the current situation with the media in Azerbaijan. These assessments, however, were omitted in the final statement of the EBU director. This caused a great deal of discontent among the members of the public organization, who strongly reproached the EBU after the conference.
The director general of the EBU, Ingrid Delterne, expressed her hope for future fruitful cooperation with the Azerbaijani government in the area of media development in the country. Specific joint events were scheduled during the meeting. Both Delterne and Gassanov agreed that Azerbaijani journalists should grow professionally.
The issue of the so-called ‘political convicts’ was not addressed in the closing statement. During the press-conference that followed the meeting one journalist asked a question about Armenia’s refusal to participate in the ‘Eurovision’ contest that is due to take place late May in Baku.
Ingrid Delterne unequivocally condemned this refusal and said that both Azerbaijan and the EBU guaranteed the safety of the Armenian delegation during the contest at the highest level. According to Delterne, this step by Yerevan violates the EBU regulations and it will have real negative consequences for Armenia. Later on it became known what consequences she meant.
The EBU had fined Armenia for not participating in the Baku contest, the official representative of the EBU told an ITAR-TASS correspondent. According to the EBU’s decision, Armenia will have to pay the participation contribution and another 50% of this sum as a fine. The representative didn’t offer actual figures of the fine. In addition, Armenian state television will have to broadcast the competition’s final on air and without interruptions, or else Armenia would be excluded from the 2013 contest.
The EBU representative also told the correspondent that when the Union made its decision it didn’t take the motives of Armenia’s actions into consideration. “According to our rules a country which states its participation in the contest can’t change its decision after a certain period”, she said. And that is what happened to Armenia – it declared its refusal to participate in the contest after the period in question had passed.
So all in all the Geneva meeting went well for Baku. Another attempt to politicize the ‘Eurovision’ contest and to use the EBU as a platform for criticizing Baku was fought off. And secondly, the EBU discredited the actions of Armenia, which had decided to boycott the Baku contest under an unconvincing pretext. So now Yerevan finds itself in quite an unpleasant situation: its ‘lonely boycott’ looks more like isolation now, and it still has to pay the fine and bare the EBU’s censure.
