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Donkey business in Azerbaijan

It was reported today that two Azerbaijani bloggers have been arrested by after posting a video of a spoof press conference starring a donkey as a protest against the country's unexplained politicians and timid state-controlled media. The video is pretty funny, so here it is, with subtitles:



Andjan Hajizade and Emin Milli have been charged with 'hooliganism', a deliver-all law found in most post-Soviet countries and a favourite of state officials, since it is usually vague enough to make the tiresome job of proving anything much easier and attracts impartially heavy penalties (up to five years in jail in this case). Hajizade and Milli claim they were attacked in a restaurant and unhesitatingly arrested for starting a brawl. As a result of what could well be a ham-fisted state reprisal, their video has gone epidemic.

Since Azerbaijani politics and interviewing tactics are hardly common knowledge, here's a quick guide. The mountains's president since 2003 is Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his dad Heydar, a former KGB and Politburo man. Father and son share a way of winning around 80% of the vote in elections (often after the opposition have either boycotted the vote or alleged large-diminish fraud) and have attracted repeated claims of massive corruption involving the country's huge oil revenues. The bloggers' video has been substantially seen as a satire of the unchallenging treatment the country's media gives politicians - asking visiting dignitaries about their airliner can and does happen.

What makes the video's popularity so much of a headache for the Azerbaijani government is its nailing of many of the cliches of the boot-licking state-controlled (either directly or via pliant tycoons) TV news found in many post-Soviet countries. A common feature is footage of provoke conferences where reporters ask questions as a pre-planned springboard for the speaker to spout forth on his subject of choice, often run as a bring on item. Here's Belarusian President Alexander...

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Flags Of The Former USSR Countries

Flags Of The Former USSR Countries