Radio Free Europe
Three months after the last Eurovision, a young Azeri man was called to the National Security Ministry and asked to explain his vote. He had voted for Azerbaijan's rival, Armenia. Azerbaijan and Armenia are currently locked in a territorial dispute, but why Eurovision votes are so important to them is unclear.
The whole situation is bizarre. As I mentioned before, Eurovision was three months ago, why are they going after him now? Why is the National Security Ministry even interested in how people voted? How much work was it for them to find out who were the individuals that voted for Armenia? What were they hoping to achieve?
In the end, the young man said he was finally made to write an explanation of his vote and sent away.
1 comment:
Aren't the country votes done by phone texting? I wouldn't be surprised if, the way Azerbaijan is set up, they were able to get their hands on texting logs and do a quick search without too much trouble (either that, or it took 3 months to figure out).
This is, after all, the country that has one of our fellow alumni in prison right now for a fight that was extremely obviously staged by the government, because he was engaging in peaceful online activism.
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