The Central Asian country called a trip by the Hawaii representative and other members of Congress to Armenia and Artsakh a “provocation.”
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has been banned from entering Azerbaijan, a formerly Soviet country in the South Caucasus region, adjacent to Russia, Iran and Armenia.
Gabbard went to the conflict-ridden region last week on what was billed as a fact-finding trip with a congressional delegation. The group visited a number of sites in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority enclave that has broken away and now calls itself the Republic of Artsakh.
Azerbaijani officials contend that Armenian forces illegally seized the Nagorno-Karabakh area during a war that ended in 1994.
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard at a town hall meeting on Lanai in April.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
Azerbaijani officials called the congressional delegation’s visit to these areas a “provocation,” according to regional press reports.
Gabbard, along with colleagues Rep. Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, and Rep. David Valadao, a Republican from California, had been added to “a list of undesirable people.”
“Pallone, Valadao, and Gabbard paid an illegal visit to the occupied Azerbaijani territories, thus breaching Azerbaijani law,” said the country’s foreign minister, Hikmet Hajiyev, in an article published by Interfax, an online news site that provides information on Eurasia.
Armenians, however, welcomed the visit.
Armenians are majority Christians and Azerbaijanis are majority Muslims. They have been sparring for a century over who has done the most damage and inflicted the most violence on the other.
On Wednesday, responding to questions from Honolulu Civil Beat, Gabbard’s office issued a press release that described the trip she had taken. The release said the trip occurred “last week.”
The trip, approved by the U.S. State Department under the Mutual Education and Cultural Exchange Act, was funded by the Republic of Armenia, according to Emily Latimer, a spokeswoman for Gabbard.
The press release did not address the ban by Azerbaijan, and Latimer offered no further comment.
Attached to the press release were pictures of Gabbard meeting with the speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia, the president of Armenia and Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Members of the congressional delegation, which included Rep. Jackie Speier and Rep. Anna Eshoo, both Democrats from Northern California, also visited a vocational school in Shushi that is supported by donations from Armenians living in other countries.