Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, published another
article on the 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh). Posting a video of Azerbaijani Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva on
Twitter, Michael Rubin stated that it depicted the drones used to attack ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh during the 44-day war, which Azerbaijan and Turkey launched on the early morning hours of September 27, 2020. The drones killed hundreds if not thousands of ethnic Armenian soldiers and civilians.
“The scandal, however, was not the tweet; racist incitement is common in Azerbaijan. Rather, it was its author: Mehriban Aliyeva, the vice president and first lady of Azerbaijan and also a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) goodwill ambassador,” the scholar writes.
Rubin says that UNESCO appoints its ambassadors in order to raise public awareness of UNESCO activities, raise funds, and “to use their talent and fame to carry high UNESCO’s values and goals.”
Rubin stressed that Azerbaijan systematically destroyed the UNESCO-protected Armenian cemetery of Julfa, including thousands of irreplaceable, medieval Khatchkars (cross-stones) with the goal not only to ethnically cleanse the present but also the past.
The scholar reminded that the art journal Hyperallergic called in “cultural genocide.” That UNESCO honors a woman, who as Azerbaijan’s vice president, was complicit in the destruction is a permanent stain on the organization. Rather than feel shamed about such cultural crimes, Mehriban appears proud.
Unfortunately, such actions are the rule rather than the exception.
