This weekend, Australians will be cheering for Oscar Piastri to win the Azerbaijan F1 Grand Prix – setting the stage to win the drivers’ championship later this year.

At the same time, they will be turning a blind eye on the host country.

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix is the penultimate in ‘sportswashing’– using sports to cover and disguise its authoritarian rule and human rights abuses. According to Freedom House, Azerbaijan scores 7 out of 100 on its freedom score, one of the lowest among nations and ranking below countries like China.

It is probably the only country in the world where the President and Vice President are husband and wife.

Azerbaijan has committed ethnic cleansing on the people of Nagorno-Karabagh, an overwhelming Armenian majority enclave for millennia, until a few years ago, when Azerbaijan invaded and the local population of more than 100,000 fled fearing for their lives.

Ethnic cleansing refers to the deliberate and systematic removal of a particular ethnic, religious, or racial group from a specific area through acts of violence, intimidation, displacement, or other means, and is contrary to international law.

Azerbaijan is illegally detaining Armenian political prisoners who are being within hundreds of metres from parts of the circuit at the State Security Service headquarters in Baku. Some of these prisoners were the political leaders of the Nagorno-Karabagh, and are denied basic legal rights and access, in contravention of international law.

Prime Minister Albanese, Foreign Minister Wong, and the Australian government have consistently supported Ukraine in relation to Russia’s invasion, because they argue it is to uphold international law and the rules-based order.

But when it comes to other regimes like Azerbaijan and illegally detaining political prisoners, Australia is silent.

If Australia truly wishes to stand for a rules-based order, it cannot pick and choose which breaches of international law are convenient to condemn.

The roar of Formula 1 engines in Baku should not drown out the voices of political prisoners whose only crime was seeking to live in freedom, and for the right of self-determination.

Several of those Armenian political prisoners in Baku, have previously visited Australia including Ruben Vardanyan, a former State Minister and Davit Ishkhanyan, former President of the National Assembly.

As Australians watch Oscar Piastri race across the circuit, let’s hope they take a few seconds to think of those illegally imprisoned hundreds of metres of away, and their government not willing to act.