Azeri police detain protesters as Baku hosts Eurovision

PanARMENIAN.Net - Police in Azerbaijan on Thursday, May 24 detained dozens of opposition activists who staged the latest in a series of unsanctioned protests as Baku hosts the prestigious Eurovision song contest, AFP reported.

The protesters were detained at an opposition rally attended by scores of people outside the ex-Soviet state's public television station, which is the Azerbaijani partner for Eurovision broadcasts.

"Thirty to 35 people were detained," a spokeswoman for the Public Chamber opposition alliance, Leila Mustafayeva, told AFP.

Among those held were two women holding a placard with the slogan "We want public TV, not Ilham TV" - a reference to Azerbaijan's strongman President Ilham Aliyev, whose activities and speeches dominate news broadcasts in the country.

Officers, some in plain clothes, rushed into the crowd to grab activists and pull them to police vans.

The Public Chamber said in a statement posted on Facebook that four opposition politicians were also detained in the morning as they left their homes ahead of the protest, adding that one had subsequently been released.

Rights activist Fuad Hassanov who was monitoring the protest called the police reaction typical. He added that as a member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) that runs Eurovision, the Azerbaijan television company was obliged to air different political views, but this was not the case.

In a separate development, Azerbaijan condemned the alleged "politicisation" of the glitzy song contest after Swedish entrant Loreen - hotly tipped as a possible winner - met human rights activists on Wednesday.

Senior presidential administration official Ali Hasanov told local media that the EBU should prevent such meetings with "anti-Azerbaijani" groups. "The European Broadcasting Union must intervene in this issue and stop these politicised actions," Hasanov told Trend news agency.

The Azerbaijani authorities want to use Eurovision to win international acclaim for the energy-rich, mainly Muslim state of 9.2 million people.

But the pop contest has also drawn unprecedented attention to allegations that Aliyev's government jails opponents, persecutes journalists, cracks down on protests and suppresses free speech.

A small protest by around 100 opposition supporters in Baku was broken up by police Monday on the eve of the first Eurovision semi-final. The second semi-final takes place later Thursday, with the grand final on Saturday.