To get doubtful propagandistic dividends, the Azerbaijani authorities keep cashing in on the humanitarian issues of prisoners of war, manipulating impudently Armenian citizens in the Azerbaijani prisons.

The last more than obvious sample of this is the video-reel promoted at the Azerbaijani websites, where the personages assert “the unbearable conditions in the Armenian army and comfortable life in Azerbaijan”.

Surely, even those in Azerbaijan realize that similar “revelations” are the results of the local special services’ activity and quite a clumsy attempt to lay the blame at somebody else's door.

However, we cannot but worry about another side of this fact. Manipulating cynically the Armenian prisoners of war and actually making a laughingstock of them, the Azerbaijani authorities violate the principles of international humanitarian law, in particular, the Geneva Conventions providing certain rules of treatment of this category of persons.

In this regard, we consider it suitable to remind that during the Karabakh war the Azerbaijani party violated regularly the Geneva Conventions canons, in particular, refusing to provide the NKR with corresponding information about the prisoners, creating unbearable conditions for the prisoners of war and hostages, exposing them to mockeries and tortures, as a result of which the majority of them deceased.

At the same time, already in the spring of 1992, the Nagorno Karabakh Republic stated their full acknowledgement of the additional protocols to the Geneva Conventions and unconditional implementation of their provisions. The unconditional observance of the Geneva Conventions by the NKR authorities was repeatedly confirmed by international human rights and humanitarian organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Considering the abovementioned, the NKR State Commission on Prisoners of War, Missing Persons, and Hostages condemns strongly the politicization of the purely humanitarian issue of prisoners of war and hostages by official Baku.

At the same time, we call on the international structures concerned, and first of all the ICRC, to react correspondingly to similar actions of the Azerbaijani party and recommend it strongly to respect the fundamental human rights.


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