Hate meets history in Azerbaijani cartoonist's anti-Armenian art

03/10/2005 13:04
Baku Today
by Simon Ostrovsky, AFP

BAKU, Oct 3 (AFP) - Venom dripping from its fangs onto a Swastika, only the efforts of powerful arms grasping metal pincers restrain a black serpent and its desire for global domination, in a drawing displayed at a Baku gallery recently.
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[...] the serpent is Kerimov's metaphor for Armenia and its "Greater Armenia" policy while the six arms grasping the pincers represent Azerbaijan's Turkic brethren from Turkey to Turkmenistan.
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This could be the description a World War II-era Soviet propaganda poster depicting the concerted effort of the allies as they hold back the menace of Nazi Germany and the Axis forces.

But this poster -- and others like it, recently on display in the Artists' Union in former Soviet Azerbaijan -- are the recent works of an Azerbaijani scientist-turned-cartoonist.

You may not have heard of it, but the author Kerim Kerimov is on a mission to blow the whistle on "Armenian hegemony."
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Anyone in Baku will tell you that Azerbaijan has many enemies: Armenia with its Russian backing, Armenia's wealthy diaspora, Azerbaijan's own opposition forces and perhaps a few loose clerics from Iran.

Kerimov goes further and puts the enemies into pictures, with horned and bewarted horrific caricatures of Armenians clawing at the map of Azerbaijan or driving a wedge between the country and its ally Turkey with a giant bomb.
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"I don't want Armenians to see an enemy in me," he said however, claiming he has received death threats from Armenians and other "enemies" of Azerbaijan.

"I want them to see that the policies they are carrying out are wrong; then life will be better for both peoples."

But his stated peaceable intentions might prove to be a tough sell to Armenians, who in his drawings are alternately depicted as big-nosed hairy demons or sometimes white-hooded Ku Klux Klan members.
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Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.