EUROPE

Warning of genocide

EU partner Azerbaijan starts war against Armenian enclave Nagorno-Karabakh

Bonn, 19 September 2023 – In full view of the international public, dictator Ilham Aliyev is attacking the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh with military strikes. Videos from the capital Stepanakert show artillery strikes, drones and rifle volleys, as well as people fleeing to cellars and seeking shelter.

The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) strongly condemns the Azerbaijani war of aggression and warns of violent ethnic cleansing. The human rights organization calls on Germany and the EU to immediately stop all economic relations with Azerbaijan and to impose severe sanctions against the Aliyev regime.

“We will hunt the dogs” was how the Azerbaijani president sounded the charge of his troops in the last war in 2020 against Nagorno-Karabakh and made this phrase, in constant repetition, into a kind of war slogan that met with widespread euphoria among the population, ISHR reports. This aggressive rhetoric is only a fraction of Azerbaijani war rhetoric and is now once again resulting in violence by Azerbaijani soldiers, the human rights organization says.

The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) pleads for a deployment of international peacekeepers under UN mandate.

“The European Union can no longer remain silent about Azerbaijan’s aggressions and must immediately show whether energy interests are more important to it than international law and respect for human rights,” says Matthias Boehning, Secretary General of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR).

The military operation, launched on flimsy grounds, has been prepared in recent weeks by massive arms shipments from Pakistan, Turkey and Israel and troop redeployments. ISHR reports that the Russian “peacekeepers” deployed to secure the region are said to have abandoned their posts. According to other sources, the Russian side provided Azerbaijan with the coordinates of all military positions and locations in Nagorno-Karabakh and moved away from the specified places, whereupon Azerbaijan began massive shelling. According to Azerbaijani sources, escape corridors had been set up for civilians, which must set alarm bells ringing and further proves what was already known: the Aliyev regime seeks the expulsion of the Armenian Christian population.