‘Ignorant’ Lammy urged to retract Azerbaijan remarks

It’s a gaffe a day with David Lammy. Now the Foreign Secretary has come under fire after he hailed Azerbaijan for being able to ‘liberate’ territory – in an ongoing conflict widely viewed as an ethnic cleansing operation – in a recent Substack post. Lammy took to his blog to express his unsolicited musings about the Nagorno-Karabakh region, writing:

The states of Central Asia look increasingly east and south. Azerbaijan has been able to liberate territory it lost in the early 1990s. Georgia and Moldova are engaging with Nato and [the] EU.

Crikey. Talk about bad wording, eh? Mr S would remind readers that Azerbaijan has been locked in an ethnic and territorial conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region – with concern growing after violence restarted in the region last year. Harrowing clips of Armenian civilians being beheaded have spread online, exposing the extent of the violence being carried out by Azerbaijani forces – making the Foreign Secretary’s choice of language all the more baffling.