Military Trophy Park, Baku, Azerbaijan #racist #wingnut rferl.org
(Article was uploaded on April 22, 2021.)
Many countries have war museums, paying tribute to a conflict's combatants and chronicling the battles that usually resulted in a great victory for the nation.
What's less usual is for such a museum to open mere months after the war and to feature cartoonish-like mannequins of the enemy soldiers.
Yet that is what is on display in downtown Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, in a museum that was inaugurated on April 12 by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
Dubbed the Military Trophies Park, the sprawling exhibit features dozens of Armenian tanks, trucks, and other heavy military equipment captured on battlefields during last year's 44-day war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The park opens with a rather chilling display -- an enclosure adorned with the helmets of Armenian soldiers killed in fighting just a few months ago.
It then takes visitors through a number of makeshift Armenian positions, including mock bunkers and barracks, adorned with wax models of Armenian soldiers.
While the park unveiling was met with shock and disgust in Armenia and further abroad, it is the mannequins -- who bear exaggerated features such as hooked noses and distorted faces -- that have drawn the most outrage. […]
A few days after the park's opening, the creators of the mannequins gave an interview removing all doubt as to their intentions, stating that they had "tried to create the most freakish depictions" of Armenians possible.