04/23/2021 Azerbaijan (International Christian Concern) – The sculptors behind Azerbaijan’s Trophy Park recently shared their thought process in the creation of the Armenian soldier wax figures that appear alongside Armenian military equipment. The park, which opened April 12, celebrates Azerbaijan’s genocidal military conquest in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The three sculptors, Kamran Asadov, Mushfig Heydarov, and Rashid Maharramov, were commissioned to create 26 wax figures to represent Armenian soldiers. According to Maharramov, a job of this size typically takes a year or more, but the team completed it in three and a half months. The sculptors were seemingly joyful and glad to work particularly hard on the creation of figures for the offensive park. Azerbaijan and Turkey’s rhetoric against Armenians and Christians affects the average citizen, encouraging and bolstering Azeris to degrade them in day-to-day actions, not just as part of military conquest.
Some wax figures were created to look like they were dying and placed in war scene replicas, including crawling out of a tank and chained in a prison cell. In an interview, Asadov said, “we tried to create the most realistic images. We usually try to do something beautiful. But now it was the other way around. It was a long and difficult process. We gave them hooked noses, flat heads and other features.”
When the park opened to the public, families and school-aged children attended. Social media shows children posing alongside the grotesque figures and examining the hall of Armenian helmets.
Azerbaijan’s Military Trophy Park increases the violent rhetoric against Armenians and Christians, placing them as lesser than in the Azerbaijani and Turkish societies. A park to engage with civilians on this level underscores the view that Christian Armenians are the enemy and target.
For interviews, please contact Alison Garcia: press@persecution.org.
