Azerbaijan & the Eurovision, a History of Cheating
Hi friends!
The Eurovision Song Contest is usually a MESS. A lot of politics, from countries AND the people.
Both neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan take part in the contest, and as expected, it hasn't been a smooth ride over the years...
What most people don't know is that Azerbaijan has a history of being caught doing questionable things in the Eurovision Contest. And it happened again during the 2022 edition.
Let's go over three times where Azerbaijan was naughty.
Hunting down people who voted for Armenia in 2009
In 2009, Armenia filed an official complaint to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), accusing Ictimai, the Azeri broadcaster, to have manipulated the voting during the final of the 2009 edition by obscuring the screen when the Armenian televoting number was shown.
Welcome to Azerbaijan. This kind of behavior is common in a country where hatred towards Armenians is expressed openly and on a regular basis.
But that was only the beginning. The EBU also received complaints that people in Azerbaijan who voted for Armenia were visited by the police.
It appeared that the National Security of Azerbaijan had traced the 43 phone lines used to vote for Armenia. The TV broadcaster confirmed that two individuals had been "invited" to the Ministry of National Security.
One of them gave a testimony of his experience here. Remember why he was interrogated by the local KGB: VOTING IN THE EUROVISION FOR A SONG HE LIKED!
The concerning part here is that the TV broadcaster reported the people to the National Security and gave all their data. Don't know for you, but that's cartoon-level dictatorship for me.
After a meeting to examine the case, the EBU committee decided to amend the rules of the Eurovision Song Contest to hold the participating broadcaster strictly liable for any disclosure of information which could be used to identify voters.
Any breach of privacy regarding voting, or interrogation of individuals, is totally unacceptable.
No joke: they had to make an official statement to explain to Azerbaijan that countries HAD TO LET PEOPLE VOTE FREELY.
A foreign idea in a country where all the presidents since the 90s are a father and a son... And where the vice-president is the wife...
Manipulating votes in 2013
A few years later, Azerbaijan came second, but made the news again for disturbing stuff...
Three stories actually happened.
First, Swedish media claimed vote-fixing and bribery took place. According to an internal source, Azerbaijan offered to bribe jury members with “enough money to live off for a year” in order to get extra points.
The fact that Malta gave 12 points to Azerbaijan in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 suddenly made sense...
A second story, from the Lithuanian website 15min, accused Azerbaijan of trying to pay Lithuanian students to vote multiple times. They had a recording showing a man named Sergei providing people with phones (five each) to vote more than once.
A transcript in English can be found here. First believed as being a hoax, the executive producer for the Eurovision later confirmed he believed it to be true.
Now, nothing proves that Azerbaijan was behind this. However, something else came up...
The third story is crazy. It's about Azerbaijan failing to give 12 points to Russia.
Russia gave 12 points to Azerbaijan, but Azerbaijan gave 0 points in return. President Ilham Aliyev and his officials claimed that Russia was voted second and should have gotten 10 points from their country. An investigation was launched, in order not to hurt relations with Russia.
UK contestant Bonnie Tyler told a French newspaper she overheard Russians asking why they didn't get the votes they paid for.
The next day the Russians were complaining to Azerbaijan – ‘why didn’t you give us the 10 points we paid for?’
All this mess led to a change in the rules around voting the following year.
Strangely enough, it is also the very year where Azerbaijan started to drop in ranking...
Irregular voting patterns and jury votes removed in 2022
Following this year's contest, Azerbaijan and five other countries had their jury scores removed due to "irregular voting patterns".
This is an ongoing story, but it shows that the Eurovision Song Contest is still under scrutiny for their chaotic voting process.
People are asking why countries that have been caught cheating are never sanctioned.
That, my friends, is the question.