HRC 52th Session: Item 9 General Debate – Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance - Embassy of Armenia to Switzerland and Permanent Mission of Armenia to the UN office at Geneva

HRC 52th Session: Item 9 General Debate – Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance

31 March, 2023

Delivered by Hrachuhi KATVALYAN, Deputy Permanent Representative

President,

35 years ago, Azerbaijan committed massacres of Armenians in Sumgait. Several other anti-Armenian mass atrocities followed. All were racially motivated, all were internationally denounced, and all remain largely unpunished. Impunity led to new crimes.

In one year alone the renowned writer in Azerbaijan was prosecuted and ostracized just for preaching for peace with Armenia; yet an Azerbaijani officer was awarded and nationally glorified for decapitating an Armenian, while the latter was in sleep.

Identity-based violence committed by Azerbaijan has been recognized by the European Court of Human Rights on the cases of torture and killing of ethnic Armenians.

The ICJ Ordered Azerbaijan to prevent incitement of anti-Armenian racial hatred, including by its officials. The UN CERD expressed deep concern with regard to incitement to racial hatred and the propagation of racist stereotypes against Armenians, including by government of Azerbaijan.

Recently a parliamentary committee of Azerbaijan adopted a statement which referred to Armenians as “a cancerous tumor of Europe”.

We heard so many times that the hate speech can be a precursor to atrocity crimes. It is a high time to act to prevent the looming tragedy.

I thank you.

Right of Reply

President,

Armenia takes the floor to respond to the right of reply of Azerbaijan.

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

The UN CERD expressed concern about the school textbooks in Azerbaijan that “promote prejudice and incite racial hatred, particularly against ethnic Armenians”.

Amid this background, the BBC recently reported that Azerbaijani schoolchildren in the city of Sumgait were forced to chant anti-Armenian slurs. In this very city, in Sumgait Armenians were massacred in 1988. It was the first, however, only one of several mass atrocities committed by Azerbaijan during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were deported from Azerbaijan in the course of those pogroms. They have not been allowed to return.

Moreover, the UN Human Rights Committee has noted with concern that in Azerbaijan “foreigners with Armenian surnames have been prevented from entering the State party regardless of their nationality.”

During the recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh anti-Armenian hatred has manifested itself in the atrocity crimes committed by Azerbaijan in the ugliest forms. 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.”

The European Parliament acknowledged that “the erasure of the Armenian cultural heritage is part of a wider pattern of a systematic, state-level policy of Armenophobia, historical revisionism and hatred towards Armenians promoted by the Azerbaijani authorities, including dehumanization, the glorification of violence and territorial claims against the Republic of Armenia which threaten peace and security in the South Caucasus.”

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

It does not come as a surprise that in accordance with the policy of national supremacy, Azerbaijan glorifies Nazi collaborators from its midst, such as Mammad Amin Rasulzadeh, and erects monuments in their honor. At the same time, it demolished monuments to the Armenian heroes from Nagorno-Karabakh, who contributed to the victory over Nazism.

The incitement to anti-Armenian hatred must stop.

I thank you.

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