“Two years ago, on September 27, Azerbaijan, blatantly disregarding the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act, unleashed a large-scale war against Nagorno-Karabakh and its people.
Today, we once again bow our heads and commemorate the memory of the fallen soldiers of the 44-day war, who fought to avert the existential danger facing our compatriots.
The war unleashed by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh was a criminal manifestation of Azerbaijan’s state policy to subject the Armenians of Artsakh to ethnic cleansing, to deprive them of the right to live and create freely and securely in their historic homeland, and thereby to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh issue through the use of force. This is evidenced by the unceasing belligerent, expansionist and Armenophobic statements of Azerbaijan’s highest leadership both before and during the war, as well as in the post-war period.
Throughout the 44-day war, the Azerbaijani armed forces committed the gravest violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, war crimes and other mass atrocities, through missile and artillery strikes and aerial attacks, including with the use of prohibited weapons, deliberately targeting the civilian population, civilian infrastructure, settlements and cultural monuments. Armenian servicemen and civilians who fell into captivity were subjected to inhuman treatment, torture and extrajudicial killings.
Numerous humanitarian issues remain unresolved: Azerbaijan continues to hold Armenian prisoners of war and civilians hostage, and the fates of hundreds of missing and forcibly disappeared persons as a result of the First Karabakh War and the 44-day war remain unclarified.
In the territories that have come under Azerbaijan’s control, the consistent policy of destroying Armenian spiritual and historical-cultural heritage and distorting identity continues to this day. The International Court of Justice of the UN has given its clear assessment of these crimes, finding that, within the framework of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm to the rights of Armenians by ethnicity. In this case, the unimpeded access and functioning of relevant international humanitarian structures in and around Nagorno-Karabakh is more than urgent,” the statement noted in particular.
