“Electric shock was used against Armenian prisoners, their hands were burned with cigarettes, their ears and hands were cut off, and even women were beheaded,” Protection of Rights Without Borders NGO representative Anna Melikyan said during a presentation of the report “Human Rights Violations During the 44-Day Artsakh War.”
Anna Melikyan explained, “The Azerbaijani armed forces have committed murders against persons not related to other direct hostilities, against civilians, and against Armenian captives, which should be qualified as crimes. The civilians killed were mostly elderly people, including women, with disabilities and mental health problems, and they were mostly premeditated murders.
The killing took place when the civilians were in the hands of the Azerbaijani armed forces until three months later. These murders are confirmed by eyewitnesses through interviews and videos. There have been cases of torture and ill-treatment on the bodies. All the people who were not killed on the spot were subjected to ethnic cleansing.”
Read also
In addition to violations of the rights of civilians, there were numerous cases where Armenian soldiers were tortured by Azerbaijani soldiers. She explained, “The violence took place from the moment of captivity on the way from the car to the prison. People were abused, threatened with mutilation, chained on the way to Baku, kept in damp rooms, beaten regularly, not given food, in some cases chained, and they were not given food. Most of them were injured.
The Azeri soldiers entered the cell, beat them, forced them to say that Karabakh is Azerbaijan or curse high-ranking Armenian officials, instructed them not to sit or lie down, and if they disobeyed, they were punished. It should be noted that it was not only the Azeri soldiers who used violence against the Armenian captives, but also the medical workers who were not supervised.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
