Verdict: Manipulation

The Facebook user Mihran Mir Poghosyan posted pictures of a Heineken beer. The flag of Azerbaijan was on the beer bottle, an inscription under the name of the brand read “Azerbaijan.” The user wrote – “Enjoy the consequences of a Turk-loving government on the streets of Yerevan. There is a future with those. What is not clear, is which country this future is in.”

It is not the first time that goods with the “Azerbaijan” tag appear in Armenia. The label does not necessarily mean that the product is Azerbaijani-made and does not have any relation with the “Turk-lovingness” of the working government. Heineken beers with the Azerbaijani flag have been imported to Armenia, but the reason for the design is that Heineken is customizing their bottles according to all the countries where the UEFA EURO 2020 league football games are going to be held.

Products With an “Azerbaijan” Tag Are Not New to Armenia

Mihran Mir Poghosyan published the post on June 14; the information was shared on Facebook groups and appeared on media pages. It is not the first case when a product imported to Armenia has a label related to Azerbaijan. For example, in June 2021, there was news that Azerbaijani products are sold in the Armenian market. The information arose from the Sandora drinks with label tags in Azerbaijani. The juice Sandora is not, however, produced in Azerbaijan. Sandora is made in Ukraine. The only official representative of the Sandora brand in Armenia, the director of Adamium has said, Sandora exports its products to more than 20 countries, among others – Armenia and Azerbaijan. Therefore, there may be information in Armenian, as well as Azerbaijani on the product.

Why is The Heineken Labelled “Azerbaijan”

Heineken is a Dutch product. The manufacturing country of that batch of Heineken was Russia. The official representative of the Heineken beer in Armenia is Sargis-Karolina LLC, which noted that they never imported beer with the Azerbaijani flag to the Republic of Armenia. However, we were told by the RA Spokesperson for the Food Safety Inspectorate, Anush Harutyunyan, that other companies also conduct the import of this beer.

The inspection body announced that the Heineken brand is the official partner of the UEFA EURO 2020 league; because of that, all the country flags where the league games are going to be held, are printed on their beer bottles, such as England, Spain, etc. There will be four games that will take place in Azerbaijan, one of which is going to be a quarter-final.

The inspection body has also mentioned that the beer was imported in accord with the regulations of the Customs Union and the import fully abided by the laws defined by the legislation of Armenia.

Ophelia Simonyan

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