Azerbaijan’s TV Spreads False Information on Yerevan

By Levon Hayrapetyan

Hetq.am

On January 2, the YouTube channel of Azerbaijani CBC TV posted a documentary entitled: “Elimination of Yerevan’s History: Part Two”, in which false information about  Yerevan’s history is presented.

It shows footage filmed in Yerevan, which, according to the Azerbaijani channel, was carried out by their correspondents.

Director of Yerevan’s Erebuni Museum, Miqayel Badalyan, who appears in the film, issued a Facebook post stating that he did not give an interview to any Azerbaijani film crew. He says he was approached by documentary film director Seda Grigoryan, in order to create a film about Urartu within the framework of an American project.

Grigoryan, in social media posts, says the producer who contacted her presented an international project on ancient civilizations, a part of which would be dedicated to the Kingdom of Urartu.

The fact that a part of the filmed interview was shown in the film of the Azerbaijani television company came as a surprise for the Armenian director.

Grigoryan states that she had a contract signed with the American No Frontiers Production LLC, which Hetq was unable to locate in the registry of organizations with American registration. According to the initial hypothesis, the Azerbaijani side probably fraudulently extracted video materials from the director from Yerevan, who, in fact, was not the only one involved in that mechanism.

Meanwhile there is no mention of Urartu in the CBC film. It touches on the history of the later period of Yerevan, the 18th-20th centuries, also pointing to some of the excavations carried out in the city. In the propaganda film, CBC shows many scenes filmed in Yerevan and Sisian, the authors of which are still unknown. According to public sources, the CBC television company belongs to the leading Azerbaijani oil extraction company SOCAR.

Seda Grigoryan and Miqayel Badalyan decided to publish the filmed interviews, in several pieces, not only to prove that the scientist’s words were presented out of context and manipulated in the Azerbaijani film, but also to convey the complete content to the public, without manipulations.