Eurovision

Last year, thousands of Azerbaijanis spontaneously took to the streets of Baku shouting and chanting. None of the demonstrators were arrested. They were celebrating Azerbaijan’s triumph in the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest.

Only a few weeks earlier, you would have witnessed an entirely different spectacle – partly fascinating, mostly disturbing, entirely incomprehensible. The Azerbaijani government’s response to demonstrations they don’t agree with.

Teenage girls shouting “freedom!” chased and knocked to the ground by police, manhandled onto buses and driven to the outskirts of town. Elderly men shouting “resign” muffled and gagged. Younger ones punched, kicked and dragged into the back of police vans; facing the prospect of days, months or even years in an Azerbaijani prison cell.

Continue reading "Eurovision can’t drown out the human rights abuses" »

With the excellence that is Eurovision upon us again, here’s a flashback piece from shortly after our Punch launch last year…

What is there not to love about Eurovision? This year we had breakdancing Albanian midgets cavorting with a man in a sequinned aquamarine bodysuit and the winner was a fiddle-wielding Norwegian boy-singer. Plus, the Warsaw Pact still seems to be in force but nobody cares.

What is there not to love about it? Oh yeah, the music.

Continue reading "Flashback:  Why Australia needs its own Eurovision" »