Interesting part: "In 2009, it was reported that the 43 Azerbaijanis who texted in votes for Armenia in that year’s contest were summoned to the National Security Ministry to explain their actions".
I'm surprised that this country was allowed to stay in the EBU after such a behavior. Really shocking.
And Azerbaijan is hosting the contest right now. A journalist friend of mine currently reporting from Baku was presented with a newspaper on hir hotel room, reading:
"[...] tourists and visitors coming to Azerbaijan will be able to personally become convinced that the Azerbaijani society is tolerant. Political pluralism and human rights have been fully ensured in Azerbaijan. The rules of our civil society do not lag behind European ones."
The EBU is a pretty tolerant organization, I guess, but tracking down people voting in the contest... What can I say? Yay nationalism.
If this happened at all, I would expect that the EBU wasn't involved. A 'sufficiently powerful' state does not need cooperation of the owner of a phone number to check who SMSes what to it.
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Interesting part: "In 2009, it was reported that the 43 Azerbaijanis who texted in votes for Armenia in that year’s contest were summoned to the National Security Ministry to explain their actions".
I'm surprised that this country was allowed to stay in the EBU after such a behavior. Really shocking.
Lebanon was more or less thrown out of the competition for not playing by the rules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon_in_the_Eurovision_Song...), so I'm surprised the EBU did not do the same here.
And Azerbaijan is hosting the contest right now. A journalist friend of mine currently reporting from Baku was presented with a newspaper on hir hotel room, reading:
"[...] tourists and visitors coming to Azerbaijan will be able to personally become convinced that the Azerbaijani society is tolerant. Political pluralism and human rights have been fully ensured in Azerbaijan. The rules of our civil society do not lag behind European ones."
The EBU is a pretty tolerant organization, I guess, but tracking down people voting in the contest... What can I say? Yay nationalism.
If this happened at all, I would expect that the EBU wasn't involved. A 'sufficiently powerful' state does not need cooperation of the owner of a phone number to check who SMSes what to it.