Azerbaijani Press: Azeri NGO urges US chef to edit Karabakh footage out of cooking show

APA, Azerbaijan
Nov 3 2017


Azeri NGO urges US chef to edit Karabakh footage out of cooking show

[Armenian News note: the below is translated from the Azeri edition of APA]

An Azerbaijani NGO has urged a US celebrity chef to edit footage
filmed in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh out of his show,
Baku-based APA news agency reported.

The letter, signed by the NGO called the Azeri community of
Nagorno-Karabakh and also by women who survived a 1990s deadly
military attack on an Azerbaijani town, was addressed to Anthony
Bourdain. The latter had travelled to the disputed region while
filming an episode devoted to Armenian cuisine for CNN's Parts
Unknown. Baku blacklisted Bourdain for the trip, which was made
without its consent. Azerbaijan says that those wishing to visit the
breakaway region must receive official permission from Baku; those who
fail to do so are declared personae non gratae.

The letter, a summary of which APA published, said that Armenian
troops attacked the town of Khojaly with the support of a Soviet
military unit during the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The
troops destroyed the town and killed a total of 613 civilians,
including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly people. Another 1,000
residents were injured, 1,275 were taken hostage and 150 went missing,
the letter said.

The signatories to the letter said they respected Bourdain's
professionality and programmes about international cuisines. However,
the letter said, although culinary exchanges bring people together in
peacetime, a "cultural programme like this one at a time of war may be
understood by people like us, who are victims of war crimes and lost
their loved ones and native lands, as support for a policy of ethnic
cleaning and forcible seizure of land".

The letter urged Bourdain to "take into account the sensitivity of the
situation and the suffering that many of us went through". "Also, we
call on you to revise your decision to include on your show the part
filmed in Azerbaijan's occupied territories which were subjected to
ethnic cleaning," it said.

The letter added: "Please, understand that we are even deprived of a
possibility to visit the graves of our parents and our other loved
ones in the occupied lands." It added that the people who wrote the
letter had for the past 25 years longed to go back to their native
lands, build their homes again and cook rice gruel, "which is an
Azerbaijani national meal" again for their children in the town of
Shusha, "in which Armenians hosted you".

APA news agency carried a summary of the address on its website. On
the right-hand side of the webpage, it placed an image of an
English-language version of the text of the address.