Statement of the Delegation of Armenia at the 13th Session of the Forum on Minority Issues of the Human Rights Council

19 November, 2020

Human Rights Council

Forum on Minority Issues, 13th session: Hate Speech, Social Media and Minorities

Panel Discussion: Causes, scale and impact of hate speech targeting minorities on social media

Delivered by Mrs. Zoya Stepanyan, Second Secretary, Permanent Mission of Armenia to the UN Office and other International Organisations in Geneva.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Armenia thanks the distinguished speakers for their insightful remarks that set the scene for this discussion.

Targeting minorities on social media is one of the most acute challenges that the international community faces these days. If twenty years ago a genocide could have been provoked through blaming a minority on radio and TV, in our days we witness incitement to this horrendous crime unfolding through the conduits of social networks.

It, however, can never happen without a tacit or direct participation of a Government. Armenia is gravely concerned that the high-level officials of Turkey commonly use such insults as the ‘Leftovers of the sword,’ referring to the Genocide of Armenians and other Christian communities. The leadership of Azerbaijan has adopted a similar derogatory stance occasionally calling Armenians “dogs who should be chased.” This happens in a country that alleges itself to have a multicultural society.

These kind of messages were not singular emotional outbursts but a constant motif of the Turkish and Azerbaijani Government’s policies, widely disseminated on social networks, including through numerous troll farms. Such concerted advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred is an early warning sign of organized and systematic violence to come, within and outside their countries, which we actually witnessed during the recent aggression of Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh.

Early detection and denouncement of egregious use of the hate speech can certainly contribute to the prevention of gross violations of human rights. The UN human rights pillar can play a key role in this regard.

Armenia further believes that private companies who manage social networks should exercise utmost vigilance in detecting and dismantling such heinous practices.

Madam Chair,

We are appalled by the impertinent and preposterous statements delivered by Azerbaijan and categorically deny the allegations they voiced.

Azerbaijan sanctimoniously declared itself a country that adopted ‘multiculturalism’ as a national policy. Meanwhile, it has been persecuting Talysh intellectuals for years. Most recently, in early November, historian and activist Fakhraddin Abbasov died in prison as he was serving 16 years term. In 2013, Hilal Mammadov, the editor of an independent newspaper, was sentenced to five years in prison on trumped up charges. The Talysh minority’s leader in Azerbaijan, Novruzali Mammadov, who edited the same newspaper before Hilal Mammadov, died in prison in 2009 after being sentenced to 10 years in jail. International human rights watchdogs said that all those charges and persecution have been politically motivated.

These days a video is being distributed by Azerbaijani users on social networks, on which the Azerbaijani soldiers humiliate an elderly civilian, and subject him to overtly inhumane treatment with exceptional cynicism. They do it just because this person is an ethnic Armenian, and it is the vivid manifestation of Azerbaijan’s systematic state policy of hate towards Armenians. It is not a singular incident but part and parcel of the systematic large-scale policy of persecution, torture and atrocities that culminated in the September-November 2020 war. The social networks are largely utilized to promote this terror.

I thank you.

MFA RA
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