Warsaw, Poland
October 6, 2022
“Human Rights and Humanitarian Issues after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War” Side Event in the framework of Human Dimension Conference of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
Open Society Foundations-Armenia Representative Arpi Harutyunyan’s speech.
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What happens in other countries when someone murders another person based on racial discrimination and ethnic grounds? They are sentenced and go to prison․ What happens in Azerbaijan if they kill an Armenian: they get praised at the highest political level, they get promoted, glorified, and are set free. This is what happened with Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani army lieutenant, who killed an Armenian lieutenant not during an armed conflict, but in peaceful circumstances, in his sleep, in Hungary during a NATO-sponsored training seminar. When transferred to Azerbaijan from Hungary to serve the rest of his sentence, he was pardoned by the President of Azerbaijan, promoted, and received an apartment and back pay. This state sponsored racism and armenophobia is what feeds these actions. Absolute impunity for such a heinous hate crime in Azerbaijan resulted in further practice of deliberate killing and beheading of ethnic Armenians, both combatants and civilians, who fell in the hands of Azerbaijani armed forces.
In the past couple of days, you have heard about, crimes of executions of Armenian servicemen and peaceful civilians, decapitation, mutilation, dismemberment and beheading of bodies of Armenians: hate crimes that were committed by Azerbaijani special forces during the 2016 April war, the 44-day war of 2020, as well as during the recent Azerbaijani attack on the sovereign territory of Armenia just a few weeks ago.
Over the last few decades, state-promoted racism against Armenians has become rampant in Azerbaijan. Already in 2008, OSCE published a report on widespread anti-Armenian hate dissemination in Azerbaijan and warned against its possible disastrous consequences.
Even, Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan himself, has openly stated that hatred towards Armenians has been a key factor in the upbringing of the new generation. The epidemic nature of this racism has been widely documented, and it has become especially violent and explicit during and after the 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.
The president of Azerbaijan regularly makes Armenophobic statements that are translated into the public consciousness. Ilham Aliyev in his speeches often makes references to Armenians as “barbarians”, “vandals”, and “fascists”.
During the 44-day war, Ilham Aliyev referred to Armenians as “animals”, claiming that “We are now driving them out as if we were chasing dogs”, an insult which subsequently gained popularity in Azerbaijan showing the degree of hostility and hate speech within Azeri society.
On 12 April 2021, Ilham Aliyev gleefully participated and delivered a speech at the opening of a trophy park in Baku dedicated to the 44-day war. The inaugurated “park” featured Armenian military equipment and mannequins of dead and dying Armenian soldiers. These were presented to the public in extremely dehumanizing and degrading way, further inciting hostile and cynical attitude against the ethnic Armenians. The Council of Europe Commissioner of Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovic, expressed her concern towards the “Trophy Park”, considering it “highly disturbing and humiliating” and stating that “this kind of display can only further intensify and strengthen long-lasting hostile sentiments and hate speech and multiply and promote manifestations of intolerance.” . Following a complaint by Armenia at the International Court of Justice some of these mannequins were removed from the park.
The State sponsored hate speech has shown its results in mass media. Monitoring of Azerbaijani mass media and social networks has revealed hatred and agitation and calls for violence and killings against Armenians. At the same time, extensive number of often state sponsored social network accounts and pages spread videos containing scenes of heinous violent hate crimes.
Hate speech by public officials reached such wide spread dimensions in Azerbaijan that in its report of 2016 the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance pointed out that “political leaders, educational institutions and media have continued using hate speech against Armenians; an entire generation of Azerbaijanis has now grown up listening to this hateful rhetoric” and issued a distinct recommendation to authorities of Azerbaijan to “ensure that public officials at all levels refrain from hate speech towards Armenians”.
In December 2021, the International Court of Justice passed an order of provisional measures, stating that Republic of Azerbaijan must “Take all necessary measures to prevent the incitement and promotion of racial hatred and discrimination, including by its officials and public institutions, targeted at persons of Armenian national or ethnic origin.” In August 2022, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination published its findings on Azerbaijan, where it is stated that the Committee is “deeply concerned about allegations of grave human rights violations committed by the Azerbaijani military forces against prisoners of war and other protected persons of Armenian ethnic or national origin.”
Despite all this, Azerbaijan’s state-promoted racism takes shape in the deliberate measures of the Baku regime to erase any physical and cultural presence of Armenians in their native communities in Nagorno-Karabakh and beyond. Alongside its gross human rights violations that create difficult living conditions for people in NK, Azerbaijan has launched a campaign of either destroying or appropriating Armenian cultural monuments.
This is not a new phenomenon, an early example is the total destruction of the ancient Armenian cemetery of Julfa in Nakhichevan between 1997-2006, in which a total of 28,000 Armenian monuments were destroyed. This act of vandalism was acknowledged and criticized by UNESCO.
The state-sponsored practice of destruction and de-Armenianization of cultural heritage received a new impetus in Nagorno-Karabakh territories fallen under the Azerbaijani control as a result of the 2020 war.
On 8 October 2020, the Azerbaijani armed forces deliberately targeted the Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi twice.
In May 2021, the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral started to undergo reconstruction, through which Azerbaijani authorities aim to change the church in an attempt to de-Armeniani.ze it. This is not the only case.
After the ceasefire statement in November 2020, reports of destruction or damaging of Armenian cultural heritage continued. Examples include destruction of the chapel of 18th century church in Shuhsi, a cross-stone in Arakel village, complete destruction of the Armenian church in Jabrail, vandalization of the 19th century church in Mataghis, turning the Park of Royal Springs of ancient city of Tigranakert into a barbeque area, etc.
Azerbaijani servicemen also actively engaged in destruction of Armenian cemeteries on territories under Azerbaijani control.
By December 2021, Caucasus Heritage Watch – a research initiative by archaeologists from Cornell and Purdue universities – through satellite imagery, observed the impact on 21 cultural sites in the territories occupied by Azerbaijan, of which 6 were destroyed, 8 were threatened, and 7 were damaged.
The hostile narratives that dehumanize Armenians fuel acts of vandalism and normalize Baku’s genocidal behavior. It is alarming how the official Baku tries to seize a territory and wipe any trace of its indigenous population from it.
Such systemic racism serves as an ideological foundation for war crimes and fuels attempts of ethnic cleansing, which become plausible in the absence of proper international oversight. Considering the highly alarming situation, we consider it to be of utmost importance to carry out the following recommendations:
- Demand for the immediate implementation of the recommendations provided by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, as well as the order of the International Court of Justice;
- Take measures to stop the destruction of Armenian cultural monuments in Nagorno-Karabakh and demand for Azerbaijan to follow the December 2021 ICJ order in regard to preventing and punishing acts of vandalism against Armenian cultural heritage;
- Condemn attempts at cultural appropriation and historical revisionism by the Azerbaijani side.
- Demand for the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights visit the areas that went under Azerbaijan’s control after the 2020 war and investigate the latter’s targeting, damaging or destroying of cultural monuments, as well as its altering and cultural appropriation of Armenian cultural monuments, and its refusal to return cultural property;
- Advocate for an OSCE-led monitoring initiative to investigate expression of racism against Armenians in Azerbaijan.