In addition to invading the area of responsibility of the Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Azerbaijani troops continue to terrorize the population of several villages in Nagorno-Karabakh on a daily basis by using loudspeakers to make threats, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the Cabinet meeting.
“This too is happening before the eyes of the peacekeepers. The Azerbaijani side is telling the villagers through loudspeakers to abandon their homes or else they will be taken out by force,” Pashinyan said.
Pashinyan said that the Azerbaijani troops are even playing the Islamic Adhan on the loudspeakers at nights in the direction of the villages, whose population is Armenian Apostolic Christian.
“We certainly have great respect for the Islamic religion and civilization, but Azerbaijan’s actions against the people is violence against the freedom of conscience and religion, a means of inciting religious hatred, and after all it is offending the religious emotions of our compatriots,” Pashinyan said.
Pashinyan also addressed the Azerbaijani policy of eradicating anything Armenian from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinyan mentioned the infamous February 23 statement by Azerbaijan’s Minister of Culture, who set up a task force to deal with the removal of Armenian traces from spiritual monuments, which the Azeri minister falsely described as “Caucasian Albanian”. Pashinyan described this statement as Azerbaijan’s public and official launch of destruction and distortion of Armenian cultural heritage.
“And the statement of the Azerbaijani minister of culture isn’t a coincidence. On March 16, 2021, during a visit to Hadrut, the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, speaking about the Surp Astvatsatsin Armenian Church of Tsakuri, said: ‘Just like the Armenians desecrated our mosques, they desecretated the Caucasian-Albanian temples. But we will restore. All these writings are fake, these are made afterwards”. These actions of Azerbaijan are an overt challenge to the UN’s International Court of Justice 2021 December 7 decision on provisional measures, which clearly obliges Azerbaijan to “take all necessary measures to prevent and punish acts of vandalism and desecration affecting Armenian cultural heritage, including but not limited to churches and other places of worship, monuments, landmarks, cemeteries and artefacts.”
PM Pashinyan emphasized that all these situations must receive a proper international probe and assessment.
“We expect from the international community a targeted assessment to Azerbaijan’s actions in Nagorno-Karabakh because the Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh is being terrorized every day, literally every single day, including the gas supply cut-off terror, and its goal is to displace them from their homes and their homeland,” Pashinyan said.
