Scots worker: Police told me horse sausage joke risked war
Welder had to be smuggled out of mine in ambulance
A SCOTTISH worker who compared Kyrgyzstan’s national dish to a horse’s penis has claimed he was told the incident could have provoked a war between the country and the UK.
Michael McFeat was working as a welder at the Kumtor gold mine, the largest in the country, when he made the post on Facebook comparing national delicacy “chuchuk” – a horsemeat sausage – to the animal’s genitalia.
His comments provoked indignation from colleagues, who called for his arrest for race hate crimes, and a short strike. He is said to have faced between three to five years if charges were pursued.
Now back home in Perthshire, Mr McFeat said: “The police told me my act could send Kyrgyzstan towarwiththeUK.”
A popular delicacy in Kyrgyzstan, the chuchuk acts as cultural symbol which sits amid a context of ethnic tensions between Kyrgyz and Russian-speaking sections of the population.
The issue has provoked intense media coverage in the country, being labelled by many outlets as the “delicatessen question”.
In an interview with the Sunday Post, Mr McFeat, 39, said he was smuggled out of the mine in the back of an ambulance after his co-workers became aware of the comments. He was then transferred to a Jeep to take him to the country’s capital, Bishkek.
During the course of this journey he said he was ambushed by locals, who he thought were wielding weapons, and run off the road. He reportedly said: “They were ramming us, trying to kill us. We stopped and five came out with something in their hands.
“I wasn’t sure if they were guns or knives or clubs, so I hid in the boot. The driver put the Jeep into reverse and fled. They ended up chasing us all around the town.”
He then said he was let out of the car and had to wait to be picked up by more security after 45 minutes.
After arriving at Bishkek airport he says he was then arrested by police and taken to another city, Karakol, and forced to make an apology.
A video has appeared on YouTube which appears to show him being interviewed by authorities, where he is seen to apologise and say: “If I had known it had been offensive in any way, I would certainly never had put it on Facebook and would have never had said it.”
The following day, he then says he appeared in court, saying: “That’s when I really began to panic because I’d been told I could go to jail for five years.
“I was in a foreign country with no idea how the legal system worked. It was a nightmare because my translator had very poor English. The only words I understood were ‘Facebook’ and ‘Scotlandia’.”
It is understood that Mr McFeat, who had worked at the mine for around eight months, was not found guilty of inciting ethnic violence and was instead deported from the country due to having the wrong documentation.
Mr McFeat, however ,says this was a cover story, reportedly saying: “I was told there was a 17-page petition demanding I be jailed and the mine went on strike after I left, so they were making an example of me.
“I can’t fault the police and I think the authorities did what they had to do. Everyone seemed to have my best interests at heart once I explained it was a misunderstanding.”
Mr McFeat, who lives in Abernethy, with wife Amanda and two children, Abbie, eight, and Logan, five, maintains he did not intend to cause offence to people in Kyrgyzstan and thought the dish was indeed a horse’s genitals.
He said: “All the ex-pats believed it [was a horse’s penis] and probably still do.”
‘‘ I wasn’t sure if they were guns or knives or clubs, so I hid in the boot. The driver put the jeep into reverse