Critics pressure Azerbaijan for more media freedom ahead of Eurovision
Today, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) held a ’Workshop on media freedom in Azerbaijan’ at its headquarters in Geneva, bringing the Azeri Government and some of its harsher international critics together to discuss progress on this issue. Organisations present included Council of Europe, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Federation of Journalists, Sing for Democracy, and Azeri NGOs. This workshop comes as media interest in Azerbaijan’s human rights profile reaches a crescendo ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest finals starting on May 22 in Baku. WRS’s Alex Helmick spoke to BBC’s Imogen Foulkes who was at the EBU: