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Proving the law really can be an ass:
A court in Azerbaijan has handed down prison terms to two bloggers who posted a video of a donkey seen as satirising the government.
Adnan Hajizade was given two years and Emin Milli two-and-a-half years after they were found guilty of hooliganism linked to a scuffle in a cafe.
They maintain they were arrested and convicted because of their online criticism of the authorities.
But of course:
[O]fficials deny the case was related to the bloggers’ anti-government views.
View the full story here, as well as a clip from the video in question.
You’d think that some of the most powerful people of their country could come up with excuses for imprisonment that aren’t so obviously constructed and see-through. I wonder who they paid off to attest to the bloggers supposed ‘hooliganisms in a cafe’ in court. It would be interesting to know if there were any witnesses attesting that in the first place though.
Having said that, it’s not like western countries are saints in that regard. in Austria they recently threw a couple of animal rights activists in the slammer, while letting managers that had bankrupted a business on counts of illegal activities with the money go free in return for bail. The charges against the managers will likely be dropped, as almost always in these cases.
This is true. I’ve been discussing this with my students and it is surprising how many abrogations of human rights exist in Europe.
More surprising is how little we are aware of it; we are so busy gesticulating eastwards that home flaws are overlooked.