Azerbaijan‘s Citizen and Development Party slammed recent media reports covering human rights violations amid Eurovision song contest in the country’s capital.

“Nowadays the journalists arriving in Azerbaijan are instructed to make its citizens slam our country’s leadership and bring the article on it. It is inadmissible. How would an English journalist feel if someone was to insult their queen?” APA quoted Ali Aliyev as saying.

He said that during Eurovision a group of spies arrived in Azerbaijan presenting themselves as journalists.

On May 26, Swedish star Loreen has beaten off a challenge from dancing Russian pensioners to win a spectacular Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan, that the host hoped would banish qualms over its human rights record.

Anti-Armenian propaganda and sentiment continue to run high in the country. During the 2009 Eurovision, several Azeris who voted for the Armenian contestant were called in for questioning for posing a "potential security threat" and being "unpatriotic".

Armenia is boycotting the contest this year, having pulled out for security reasons. Besides, those who had visited Nagorno Karabakh were barred from travelling to the contest.

A BBC Panorama investigation – ‘Eurovision’s Dirty Secret’ – shown on 22 May, revealed the depths to which the dictatorial regime and its ‘kept’ oil companies go in trying to crush resistance. It awarded Azerbaijan ‘Nul points’ for its human rights record.