HRC 55th Session. Item 3 – ID with SR on the Rights of Minorities

Delivered by Ms. Lilit Toutkhalian, Minister Extraordinary and Envoy Plenipotentiary

Mr. President,

Armenia congratulates Special Rapporteur for his first appearance at the Council and thanks for the report.

Likewise, we thank the OHCHR for the report on its activities. It contains a reference to the High Commissioner's statement made during the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. It also has a reference to the press-release of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions who "urged Azerbaijan to guarantee the rights of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh."

The anti-Armenian stance of Azerbaijan has been also under the constant attention of this mandate, since there has been a registered pattern of violations. They include the destruction of the centuries old Armenian cultural and religious heritage.

The recent report of the Freedom House indicated that with regard to political rights Azerbaijan has managed to drop below Afghanistan. It is obvious that Azerbaijan is neither willing nor able to honour its international obligations and ensure rights of the minorities. As a result of a continuous and persisting violations of human rights Azerbaijan was expelled from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

In these circumstances the rights of minorities are under a serious threat in Azerbaijan.

Thank you.

Right of Reply

President,

We are compelled to take the floor to reply to the intervention by Azerbaijan.

Colonial perceptions and prejudices about Armenians made Azerbaijani authorities think that annihilation is a conventional way out. In only couple of years between 1988-1990 Azerbaijan forcibly displaced around 360.000 Armenians. The extinction was accompanied with massacres, looting and destruction. In last three years Azerbaijan expelled 145.000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh. In total 500.000 Armenians were living in Soviet Azerbaijan. Today there are none. It is one of the biggest ethnic cleansings in the 21^st century history of Europe.

Recently Azerbaijan has declared that it was ready to guarantee the rights and security to Armenians "just like it provides to anyone else", as they claim. However, the Human Rights Watch and many other reputable watchdogs report a different state of affairs in Azerbaijan, where the fundamental freedoms have been "virtually extinguished".

Azerbaijan falsely exploited the principle of territorial integrity to justify the inhumane blockade and the subsequent ethnic cleaning that it committed in Nagorno-Karabakh. Now Azerbaijan continuously violates the territorial integrity of Armenia putting forward ungrounded territorial claims. This vividly demonstrates that Azerbaijan does not respect the international law, but rather exploits its principles in a way it wants to. Several times on the highest levels Azerbaijan publicly claimed that the international law does not work and that the might is right.

This is furthermore complicated by the continued racial hatred against Armenians. The ICJ ruled, that Azerbaijan must "Take all necessary measures to prevent the incitement and promotion of racial hatred and discrimination, including by its officials and public institutions, targeted at persons of Armenian national or ethnic origin."

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

The Advisory Committee of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities noted "a persistent public narrative surrounding the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh identifying [in]variably Armenia or Armenians as 'the enemy' and openly promulgating hate messages."

The European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance stated that "Political leaders, educational institutions and media have continued using hate speech against Armenians; an entire generation of Azerbaijanis has now grown up listening to this hateful rhetoric".

I thank you.

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