The Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Artsakh, Gegham Stepanyan, wrote a letter to Google, urging the company not to be swayed by Azerbaijani provocations, to disregard the unfounded demands presented by Azerbaijan, and to refrain from removing Armenian place names in Artsakh from digital maps.
The Human Rights Defender particularly noted that these efforts by Azerbaijan are a manifestation of the long-standing Azerbaijani policy of depriving the people of Artsakh of their homeland and denying the Armenian identity of Artsakh. He recalled that in the autumn of 2020, Azerbaijan’s attack unleashed against the people of Artsakh, which was aimed at the seizure of the entire territory of Artsakh and the destruction of its people, became the culmination of Azerbaijan’s criminal policy.
Stepanyan stressed that in order to provide a false legal justification for its claims over Artsakh, Azerbaijan is deliberately erasing, destroying and eliminating any trace of Armenians and Armenian culture and history from every centimetre of the territory that has come under its control.
«The real motives behind Azerbaijan’s demands to remove Armenian place names from maps can be easily defined: Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) is not simply a place name, but a whole of Armenian culture and history. The Armenian place names of Artsakh are memories of place, as well as living memories of the people who gave those names to those places. Place names serve as symbols of regional culture and thus reflect the history and environment of the given place. Azerbaijan’s demand to remove Armenian place names from maps is nothing other than an attempt to create a reality desirable for itself on maps, with the aim of contributing to its criminal policy», noted the Human Rights Defender of Artsakh.
In his letter, Stepanyan presented the provisions of international law, which enshrine the right of peoples to freely use, preserve and bequeath their place names to future generations. He emphasised that international law does not regard place names and geographical names as the property of states, but as the intangible heritage of peoples.
Gegham Stepanyan stated that the removal of Armenian place names would only encourage Azerbaijan’s gross violations of the rights of the people of Artsakh and would support the legitimisation of the results of the illegal use of force.
Highly appreciating the company’s people-centred approach, which is expressed through the use of Armenian place names on maps, the Human Rights Defender expressed confidence that the company will reject Azerbaijan’s ongoing attempts to change the maps and to carry out ethnic cleansing against the people of Artsakh.
