The Human Rights Defender of Armenia, Arman Tatoyan, told journalists during an interview that what was published about his extraordinary report was only a portion of it. “Anti-Armenian propaganda in Azerbaijan is not only not decreasing, but it is also organized institutional propaganda. There have also been new developments as it is generated by the highest governmental bodies. It is encouraged by cultural figures and encouraged in society. According to our research, Azerbaijani soldiers use the same vocabulary as the highest-ranking political bodies in Azerbaijan when they commit war crimes. New developments have also taken place after the war. For example, on December 10th during the military parade, the speeches made by the presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey both had open threats of genocide. The President of Azerbaijan’s speech to the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group and his speech in 2021 also contained the same rhetoric.”
According to the Ombudsman, everything needs to happen to ensure that international agencies are aware of this.
Regarding prisoners of war, Tatoyan said, “It’s obvious that Azerbaijan is trying to politicize the issue of prisoners of war. They are doing everything to ensure that legal structures remain unaware of this issue. The same goes for different UN bodies and trying to politicize this. We should not allow this because this has nothing to do with politics. They use the trilateral agreement as an excuse. They say that Armenia has violated certain points while using the issue of prisoners. It’s obvious that this issue has no political value, nor can it. It’s very bad that there is nothing about this issue in the trilateral agreement, but even if it wasn’t there, does that mean that they can’t return the prisoners? We should not allow this, nor should we allow them to connect that to any point in the agreement because this is an issue of defending human rights. They need to uphold the exchange of prisoners and that’s it. This is an issue of human rights. They file criminal cases against our prisoners of war and more. This is also a direct violation of international humanitarian rights. They do not have the right to do that.”
Hripsime Jebejyan
