Andrew Connelly
Rejoice! After years of enviously watching athletes in Asia, Africa,
the Pacific and the Americas flaunt their sporting might together as
continental brothers and sisters, Europe finally has a competition to
call its own. Live, from the fifth most censored country in the world,
it’s the first ever European Games.
It
is impressive to see Baku holding an event so flash, sophisticated and
well-attended when one remembers that barely two decades ago the city
was a dusty backwater still convulsing from the collapse of the Soviet
Union and war with neighbouring Armenia. Yet even before the opening
ceremony on June 12th, there were sinister signals that this event would
not quite live up to the Olympic ideals. Officials from Amnesty
International, which planned to hold a press conference in Baku during
the games, to highlight the country’s political prisoners, were denied
visas. As were delegates from Human Rights Watch. A British activist
from Platform London was detained at Baku airport for over 30 hours
before being promptly deported. Journalists from the BBC, the Guardian, Radio France International and German broadcaster ARD were also denied accreditation.
When this news broke, I attended a press conference where
presidential adviser Ali Hasanov ruminated that this was an
anti-Azerbaijani campaign directed by Western elements jealous of the
country’s success. Another way of interpreting this is that government
officials are not fond of media who have explored claims that they have
in recent years siphoned off untold billions of state assets into their
personal accounts, annihilated the free press and neutralised or
imprisoned anyone who dared speak out against their behavior.
Even
from a pragmatic perspective, denying entry to journalists from major
media outlets was a careless move that completely backfired. The
Azerbaijan government, far from muting issues it didn’t want discussed,
managed to amplify them and attach intrigue and skulduggery to the
European Games even before the event had officially started. In doing
so, the government very helpfully exploded that old deceit that these
showboat sport extravaganzas serve as some wondrous key for world peace,
rather than the cynical orgy of unblinking power, geopolitics and
capital that they unfailingly end up being.
In the Roman Empire,
it was said all that was needed for a happy populace was bread and
circuses. It has been speculated that Azerbaijan spent up to $10 billion
on hosting the European Games. Bread, however, can be a luxury for some
in a land where the average monthly salary is around $400 and
significantly less outside the capital. The opening ceremony’s bill of
$100 million seemed comparatively austere to the overall cost of the
games. It was in fact a stunningly elaborate spectacle that blended 12th
century Persian poetry, flying carpets, exploding pomegranates and …
Lady Gaga. The latter’s attendance was a closely guarded secret until
the last minute, when she appeared at a piano adorned with flowers to
trill John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Depending on the cultural sensitivities
of the country where this song is performed, singers sometimes omit the
lyrics imaging there is no God. Until last week I have never heard a
version which leaves out the line imagining “no need for greed or
hunger.” Perhaps Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev had given some
helpful artistic guidance beforehand?
As the spiritual home of BP, which
hoovers up more than 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Azerbaijan,
and that country’s largest foreign investor, Britain was expected to
send an exciting guest to the opening ceremony. Prince William? Sting?
Someone from Game of Thrones? Almost. Britain was valiantly represented
by Tobias Ellwood MP, Parliamentary undersecretary of state at the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Alas, my attempts to get an autograph
were thwarted by the millions of screaming fans ahead of me. The
Honourable Member’s Twitter feed duly cranked out some messages banging
the drum for British business and support for athletes of “Team GB.” The
next day Ellwood flew to Bahrain where #Reform and #HumanRights were on
the agenda, talking points apparently absent from his Baku trip.
The
lack of any senior British representative was symptomatic of the rest
of Europe’s energetic incuriosity about the event. The only European
heads of state in attendance from farther West were Prince Albert of
Monaco and the grand duke of Luxembourg. There were however, some more
regal dignitaries from the local neighbourhood, namely President
Vladimir Putin of Russia, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey,
President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus and President Gurbanguly
Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan.
Even Erdogan would remark the
following day, “I could not see any leaders from the EU, although the
name of this event is ‘European Games,’ the Turkish leader sniffed. To
which Putin (with whom he was holding talks), retorted with a
mischievous grin, “As a European Union candidate country, you are
representing the whole bloc.” At one point in the ceremony, for fans of
Greek mythology, a performer representing the Phoenician woman Europa
(for whom the continent was named) sailed across the stadium on top of a
white bull suspended from the eaves, just to hammer home the message
that this was a European thing.
Speaking of bull, Patrick Hickey,
the president of the European Olympic Committees and chief architect of
the European Games project (and former Irish judo champion), took to
the stage to address the audience. Among the blizzard of platitudes, he
spoke of how sport “has a unique power to affect positive change, to
instil a set of values that make change inevitable” before dropping the
buzzwords “global ethics, fair play, respect and friendship.”
Reporters
Without Borders ranks Azerbaijan 162 out of 180 countries in its annual
press freedom index. Transparency International ranks Azerbaijan 126
out of 175 on its global corruption index. Democracy was always a risky
sport in Azerbaijan, but in the last year, the correlation between
Azerbaijan’s growing global presence and the severe crackdown on
journalists and human rights activists has been absolute. Those who have
not been thrown in jail have either fled or have fallen silent to the
extent that Baku now seems like a ghost town for civil society.
Before
embarking to Azerbaijan, I met a human rights worker in a café in
neighbouring Tbilisi, Georgia, who told me: “For the first time in a
decade, I literally don’t know who to meet over there anymore.” The next
day, an email landed in my inbox from a well-connected analyst: “I’m
sorry, Andrew, but my Baku colleagues were simply too fearful to be in
contact with you.”
"Politico," June 16, 2015 (www.politico.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment