HRC 56: ID with SR on Racism

08 July, 2024

Delivered by Ms. Lilit Toutkhalian, Minister Extraordinary and Envoy Plenipotentiary

Mr. President,

Armenia welcomes the Special Rapporteur and thanks for her timely report.

The glorification of Nazism is closely intertwined with other practices fueling contemporary forms of racism, discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

This policy has been for years cultivated in Azerbaijan against ethnic Armenians. The UN CERD has qualified it as “incitement to racial hatred and the propagation of racist stereotypes against persons of Armenian national or ethnic origin.”

On numerous occasions Azerbaijan has declared “all Armenians of the world” as its “main enemies.”

The European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance has observed that an entire generation of Azerbaijanis has grown up listening to anti-Armenian hateful rhetoric.

It is this generation that committed an ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. The authorities of Azerbaijan refer to it as a “final cleaning”. They have never made a secret of their intent. The former Deputy Prime Minister and then mayor of Baku openly drew parallels with Holocaust and claimed that (I quote) “our goal is the complete elimination of Armenians.”

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan glorifies Nazi collaborators from its midst, such as Mammad Amin Rasulzadeh, and erects monuments in their honor.

I thank you.

Right of Reply

President,

Azerbaijan has for decades cultivated an echo chamber of racist hatred against ethnic Armenians. The children of Azerbaijan are taught to hate and kill Armenians in their school textbooks. The State media spews vile hate speech. Recently a parliamentary committee of Azerbaijan adopted a statement which referred to Armenians as “a cancerous tumor of Europe”.

Azerbaijan issued a postal stamp displaying a disinfection specialist standing over a map of Nagorno-Karabakh and fumigating it. The racist nature of the stamp was obvious. Hence, the Universal Postal Union decided not to register it.

The International Court of Justice ordered Azerbaijan to prevent anti-Armenian incitement and promotion of racial hatred, including by the officials and public institutions. Azerbaijan has failed to implement this and other binding ruling of the Court.

This long-standing State policy of racial hatred came to a violent head in September 2020 when Azerbaijan launched a war against the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. The UN CERD has expressed deep concern on “allegations of severe and grave human rights violations committed during the 2020 hostilities and beyond by Azerbaijani military forces against prisoners of war and other protected persons of Armenian ethnic or national origin, including extrajudicial killings, torture and other ill-treatment and arbitrary detention”

Azerbaijan erected a Trophy Park in its capital to glorify those atrocities. As the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe stated “this kind of display can only further intensify and strengthen longstanding hostile sentiments and hate speech, and multiply and promote manifestations of intolerance.”

It is noteworthy that discrimination and the identity-based crimes committed by Azerbaijan have also been recognized by the European Court of Human Rights on the cases of torture and killing of ethnic Armenians.

The Freedom House, which ranks Azerbaijan as “not free” country, concluded that “the actions and rhetoric of Azerbaijani authorities in conjunction with the lived experiences of the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh provides reasonable grounds to conclude that their forced displacement was intentional. The evidence suggests a coordinated, long-term plan aimed at ridding Nagorno-Karabakh of its ethnic Armenian population.”

This policy has been adhered by Azerbaijan since the very first massacres of Armenians staring from the end of 1980s. There were around 500.000 Armenians living in Soviet Azerbaijan. There are almost no Armenians living there today.

The incitement to anti-Armenian hatred must stop.

Thank you

MFA RA
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