The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry will put Anthony Bourdain, a popular American chef and CNN host, on its list of
personae non gratae
, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev has
announced
.
Hajiev explained that these measures would be taken because Bourdain had paid an illegal visit to Azerbaijan’s occupied territories. For his show “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown”, the TV personality visited Shusha, a city in Nagorno-Karabakh under Armenian occupation.
Pictures that he
posted
on Instagram show him visiting Armenia before taking a helicopter to travel to Nagorno-Karabakh. He commented that he would be filming for “Parts Unknown” there.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry launched an investigation after Bourdain had published the photos.
Cameraman Jerry Risius ponders our chosen means of transport ( Russian MI-8 MTV-1)A post shared by anthonybourdain (@anthonybourdain) onOct 17, 2017 at 7:38pm PDT
Azerbaijan’s list of personae non gratae includes people who are banned from entering the country due to violating the “Law on the State Border” of the Azerbaijani Republic and visiting Nagorno-Karabakh without seeking official permission from Azerbaijan.
In August 2013, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry published a full list of 330 personae non gratae that included members of parliaments, politicians, journalists, students, artists, painters, and other people from different countries and international organisations. Among them are celebrities such as Spanish opera singer
Montserrat Caballe
, and politicians such as Russian Duma member
Konstantin Zatulin
. The list of unwelcome people has since grown to 672 people.
