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  • Overboard: Russian Citizen Was Denied Boarding Azeri Airliner Becaus

    OVERBOARD: RUSSIAN CITIZEN WAS DENIED BOARDING AZERI AIRLINER BECAUSE OF HIS ARMENIAN SURNAME
    By Aris Ghazinyan

    ArmeniaNow
    02.11.11 | 15:53

    Popular Russian radio and TV anchor, journalist Vladimir Solovyov
    declared a few days ago that the Azeri authorities' attitude towards
    Armenians has nothing to de with their citizenship, but is pure
    manifestation of racism, just as Nazis treated the Jews at the time.

    "Even one drop of Armenian blood to them is a subject of wild,
    inhuman, I would even say, beastly, hatred. To me as a Jew that hatred
    outright reminds of the tragedy of my nation and the Holocaust,"
    Solovyov stressed.

    What triggered this response and agitated certain layers of Russian
    society was an incident when Russian citizen Sergey Gyurjian, head
    of export sales at AutoVaz Russian automobile manufacturer, was not
    allowed to take a Moscow-Baku flight operated by AZAL Azeri air company
    because of his Armenian surname. (A Russian citizen, born in Moscow,
    Gurjian was flying to Azerbaijan to take part in the opening ceremony
    of an AutoVaz affiliate there.)

    Gyurjyan claims that at Moscow's Domodedovo airport AZAL company
    employee Svetlana Rodionova refused to check him in, explaining it by
    the company administration instruction not to check-in passengers with
    Armenian surnames. "That's the instruction, it's a security issue,"
    Gyurjian quoted Ilgar Aliyev, representative of Azeri Airlines.

    Moscow-based Kommersant, Russian daily online, reports that the
    incident with Russian citizens has reached the Russian president's
    administration. Assistant to the President Arkady Dvorkovich qualified
    the incident in his Twitter as "outrage".

    Addressing "our dear Azeri friends," Solovyov commented: "It is not
    an Armenian that you have insulted, but the Russian Federation and
    each and every citizen of the Russian Federation, regardless of their
    ethnic, national, religious and other roots."

    Addressing Azeri immigrants in Russia, he said: "You, who have come
    here in great numbers and are spitting on our culture, have you lost
    your senses? You now feel entitled to openly discriminate against
    Russian citizens in the territory of the Russian Federation? What do
    you think you are doing?"

    Vice President of Russian Union of Travel Industry Yuri Borzykin
    believes that incident was a "single instance". However, he said,
    that during their scheduled visit to Baku and negotiations with their
    partners over further cooperation prospects, the union representatives
    will inquire into the peculiarities of Russian citizens' visits
    to Azerbaijan.




    From: A. Papazian
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