AZERI WITCHHUNT OVER EUROVISION VOTES
By Shaun Walker in Moscow

The Independent
Wednesday, 19 August 2009

Security forces in Azerbaijan have launched a campaign against dozens
of citizens for voting for the wrong entry in this year’s Eurovision
Song Contest. Authorities in the oil-rich country are apparently
tracking down people who voted for Azerbaijan’s bitter enemy Armenia
in the competition held in May.

The two countries fought a vicious war in the 1990s over the region of
Nagorno-Karabakh, which is now under the control of ethnic Armenians
but is claimed by Azerbaijan. All borders between the two countries
remain closed and tensions remain high, even over such a seemingly
insignificant event as Eurovision.

Rovshan Nasirli, a resident of Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, was one
of 43 people in the country to vote for Armenia’s entry "Jan-Jan",
sung by the duo Inga and Anush. He told Radio Liberty that he had
been summoned to the country’s national security ministry last week
to explain himself.

"They wanted an explanation for why I voted for Armenia. They said
it was a matter of national security," said Mr Nasirli, who voted by
text message. "They were trying to put psychological pressure on me,
saying things like, ‘You have no sense of ethnic pride. How come you
voted for Armenia?’ They made me write out an explanation, and then
they let me go."

This year’s contest, which was held in Moscow and won by Norway, was
already the most politicised in the history of Eurovision. Georgia,
which fought a war with Russia last summer, refused to take part in
the contest after it was told to change the lyrics of its entry. The
song, entitled "Don’t Want to Put in", was widely seen as a pun on
the surname of Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and thus broke
contest rules that songs cannot be political.

Luckily for Mr Nasirli, he had a cast-iron excuse for voting for Inga
and Anush. He didn’t like the Azerbaijani entry, which featured an
Iranian singer based in Sweden, and voted for Armenia because the
song actually sounded "more Azeri".