Within a day, nearly 20 Azerbaijani Telegram channels with tens of thousands of followers shared photos of Armenian children with falsified and propaganda comments. The children, being deprived of parental care for 40 days, were returning back to Artsakh on the 17th of January 2023, after the ongoing blockade of the Lachin corridor (Berdzor-Stepanakert highway). Photos and videos were shot by so-called eco-activists.
Particularly, a telegram channel with more than 32k subscribers posted photos of the children again distributing hate speech: “Video from Lachin highway, through which passed Armenian children, who were prevented from returning to their parents in Khankendi (Stepanakert) by the authorities of Armenia and separatists.
Similarly, there were many fake, Armenophobe, hate-speech-containing, and even child-abusive calls in the comment sections of social media channels.
A considerable amount of comments reflect the main fake theses of Azerbaijani propaganda, such as:
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- The road is not blocked but open for humanitarian purposes.
- Artsakh is not surrounded and there is no humanitarian crisis because of the “Action”.
- Azerbaijanis are too kind, as they let the Armenian children come back to their homes.
- It’s very good and right, that all cars and loads are checked by the Azerbaijanis before letting them in.
Nevertheless, some part of the comments contains hate speech, targeting not only the children but also all Armenians.
Below some of those comments are presented.
“Institute of Liberal Politics”, together with other activities, conducts media monitoring of Azerbaijani mass media in order to find out manifestations of Armenophobia, and hate-speech-containing phrases towards Armenia and Armenians. Monitoring is conducted within the frames of the project “Combating hate speech for the sake of pluralism and tolerant democratic society” funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Republic of Armenia. The results will be regularly presented by the Institute on the http://liberalinstitute.am webpage and on the social media channel of the Institute.
