Along with creating a humanitarian
disaster in Nagorno-Karabakh, old and new videos, photos and other publications
containing hostility and hatred towards Armenians are being actively
disseminated in the media platforms and social networks of Azerbaijan.
Furthermore, all of this is accompanied
by comments by Azerbaijani society full of hate and armenophobic speeches,
praising the human rights violations committed by the Azerbaijani armed forces
against both military personnel and civilians, including war crimes and
atrocities.
The Defender once again records that
such an intolerant attitude of the Azerbaijani society is the consequence and
proof of the armenophobic policy as well as the policy of ethnic cleansing of
the Azerbaijani authorities.
In addition, ethnically based hate
propaganda against Armenians in Azerbaijan has also been recorded by
international human rights monitoring bodies, in particular, in the concluding
observations on the 10th to 12th periodic reports of Azerbaijan to the United
Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) from
September 22, 2022, and in the report of the European Commission against Racism
and Intolerance (ECRI) of 29 March 2023.
Both the committee and the commission
have expressed their concern regarding the incitement to racial hatred and the
propagation of racist stereotypes against persons of Armenian national or
ethnic origin, including on the Internet and social media, as well as by public
figures and government officials.
Moreover, the use of discriminatory
language and propaganda of intolerance towards ethnic Armenians in school
textbooks was also considered worrying. In this regard, ECRI also recorded the
prevalence of hate speech against Armenians among the youth, in school and
beyond, stressing that it can create fertile ground for further military
operations.
Pointing out the existence of
aggressive rhetoric against ethnic Armenians in Azerbaijani society, including
by officials, ECRI noted that the boundary lines between the Azerbaijani
political and other public discourse against Armenian decision-makers and hate
speech towards Armenians as an ethnic or national community are blurred and
practically impossible to discern, although the Azerbaijani authorities refuse
to accept that the resentment on the part of Azerbaijani society is against
persons of Armenian origin but not only against Armenian decision-makers.
The Defender emphasizes that this
dangerous armenophobic policy of Azerbaijan should be at the center of the
attention of organizations with a mandate of human rights protection, noting
that this dangerous phenomenon rooted in society as a result of years of
coordinated policy cannot be eliminated through the mere verbal declaration of
the Azerbaijani authorities, but it is necessary to implement systematic and
serious practical mechanisms in that direction.
Considering the important role of
national human rights institutions in overcoming human rights-related problems,
including the aforementioned ones, the Human Rights Defender of the Republic of
Armenia continuously monitors various manifestations of hatred within the
framework of its mandate and is consistent in enacting mechanisms for
overcoming the mentioned phenomenon.
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