Agence France Presse — English
March 30, 2005 Wednesday 9:58 PM GMT
Russian pop star cancels concert in Armenia after youth groups
protests
MOSCOW
Russian pop singer Filipp Kirkorov late Wednesday cancelled a planned
concert in Armenia’s capital Yerevan after some 30 Armenian youth and
student groups voiced outrage at they claimed was his pro-Turkish,
anti-Armenian attitude.
“If they do not want to see and hear me in Yerevan, then this will
not happen,” Kirkorov told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
Armenian youth and student groups last week made public a protest
letter in which they accused Kirkorov of being anti-Armenian and
pro-Turkish, and of having publicly insulted an Armenian reporter,
slighting her background.
They claimed his planned April 8 concert in Yerevan would be
“immoral” if held on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the Armenian
massacre of 1915 which Turkey still refuses to consider a genocide.
The letter’s signatories warned that they planned to meet Kirkorov at
the airport with slogans and eggs in hand.