Baku Games to open under shadow of alleged crackdown

By Karolos Grohmann BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan has spared no expense in staging the inaugural European Games, which will get underway on Friday with a lavish opening ceremony, but the event has also turned the spotlight on its human rights record. The energy-rich nation on the Caspian Sea has spent more than a billion dollars to stage its biggest sports extravaganza to date, according to officials, building several dazzling venues from scratch for the 16-day competition. The Games, featuring about 6,000 athletes from 50 nations, have however failed to attract the biggest track and field athletes and swimmers. Instead, lower-ranked competitors will take part in two of the most popular sports in the Olympic world. Officials have said some 35 heads of state, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, will be at the ceremony at the brand new Olympic Stadium, which will host just two days of competitions in total. But money is obviously no object for the Azeri government and its president Ilham Aliyev, eager to lay the foundations for a highly likely Olympics bid in the future. Organisers hope Friday's opening ceremony, deploying some 2,000 participants, will mark the beginning of a successful event that will strengthen the country's position in the international sports world, just as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have done before them in recent years. But the government, which has banned officials from human rights organisations as well as some media from entering the country, has faced accusations of consistent human rights violations since it was awarded the Games in 2012. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the build-up to the event had seen the worst crackdown in Azerbaijan in the post-Soviet era. The government rejected claims of a systematic campaign against dissidents, blaming "western circles" for fanning the issue. But the accusations are unlikely to go away any time soon in a country ruled by the Aliyev family since 1993. Khadija Ismayilova, a jailed journalist, said in letter to the New York Times on Friday that political prisoners had been targeted "for telling the truth about the situation in my country". "Do not let the government of Azerbaijan distract your attention from its record of corruption and abuse. Keep fighting for human rights, for those who are silenced," she wrote. Some European politicians as well as athletes have publicly spoken out against the event, saying the country should never have been awarded the games in the first place. European Olympic Committees President Patrick Hickey, whose organisation picked Azerbaijans as host of their newly created event, said his was not a political organisation. "There's one thing we cannot do and that is to dictate to a sovereign state how to run its affairs," he said on Thursday, the same day authorities banned the Guardian newspaper's chief sports correspondent, Owen Gibson, from travelling to Baku. But with world football's governing body FIFA in turmoil over corruption allegations for awarding the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, criticism of the EOC for its decision is expected to continue throughout the competition. (Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Angus MacSwan)