Four months after the ceasefire agreement of November 9, 2020 signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, the Baku regime still refuses to apply one of its main humanitarian clauses: the release of prisoners of war. It is estimated at two hundred the number of those who are still detained in the prisons of this petrodictatorship. During a press conference on February 26, President Ilham Aliyev declared that he considered these detainees to be “terrorists” on the grounds that their arrest took place after November 9. However, these soldiers were at that date trapped in the pocket of Hadrout, one of the main fronts during the conflict, a city surrounded, but not yet occupied by the Turkish-Azerbaijani-jihadist forces at the time of the signing of the ceasefire. -fire.
By seizing on this pretext, the Azerbaijani Head of State is committing a gross violation of his obligations, in their letter as well as in their spirit. This non-respect of a signed document shatters all hope of a return to normal life for what remains of the Armenian people on their ancestral lands, one hundred years after the genocide of 1915. It can only be interpreted as a an additional manifestation of hatred towards this entity that President Aliyev had promised to “hunt like dogs”. And this, after 44 days of military aggression, bombardments and abuses which resulted in the death of 3,500 Armenian conscripts, most of them in their twenties, and the flight of tens of thousands of refugees.
The systematic practice of war crimes perpetrated by the Azerbaijani side throughout its offensive, and in particular the complacent dissemination of videos of summary executions, torture inflicted on soldiers as well as Armenian civilians, mutilations of corpses, let fear the worst for those whose fate is now subject to the arbitrariness of a regime ranked among the very last on the planet in the report on freedom and democracy that Freedom House has just published. A ranking which confirms that of all human rights NGOs, including Reporters Without Borders, which places Azerbaijan at the 168e place out of 180 countries, in its ranking on press freedom.
The signatories of this appeal ask France, co-chair of the Minsk Group, in charge of negotiations for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, to use all its authority to obtain the release of the Armenian prisoners of war. If this group mandated by the OSCE has not been able to prevent war or defend the victims, let it at least ensure that this humanitarian clause of the ceasefire is respected.
An issue that appears to be the prerequisite for the establishment of a negotiated peace, a condition for the rule of law over violence in this region which must not be abandoned to the law of totalitarianism, pan-Turkishism and barbarism.
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