Azerbaijan Saturday announced its decision to withdraw the participation of its weightlifters from an international competition held in the capital of its adversary, Armenia, following a flag-burning fiasco.
The two ex-Soviet Caucasus nations are locked in a decades-long dispute over Azerbaijan's Armenian-majority region of Nagorno-Karabakh. They went to war twice – in the 1990s and most recently in 2020 – over the mountainous breakaway region.
Footage from the European Weightlifting Championships opening ceremony in Yerevan on Friday showed a man running to the stage, snatching Azerbaijan's flag from a flag-bearer and setting it on fire.
Azerbaijan's Ministry of Youth and Sports said in a joint statement with the National Olympic Committee that it decided to bring its athletes home following what it described as a "barbaric act" at the ceremony.
"In conditions when such an atmosphere of hatred prevails in Armenia, security is not ensured, the normal participation of Azerbaijani athletes in competitions is impossible because of the psychological pressure," the statement said.
"Politicizing sport is absolutely unacceptable," it added, urging the European Weightlifting Federation to impose sanctions on Armenia.
Azerbaijan's foreign ministry said it "strongly condemned" the incident and called Armenia to "immediately bring to justice" the person responsible.
Local media said Armenian police briefly detained the man responsible, designer Aram Nikolyan, and, according to his lawyer, he was released without charges.
In a statement, Armenia's Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports denied any risks for athletes participating in the competition.
"The incident that occurred during the opening ceremony, which was resolved quickly, has nothing to do with guarantees of safety of the athletes," it said.
