Sheila Paylan , Human Rights Lawyer
In the wake of the latest carnage in the south Caucasus, the West seems inclined to step gingerly into a void left by Russia, a former regional arbitrator that is currently distracted elsewhere. That’s good—but now the West must take real action and call a spade a spade. Any potential peace without justice is unlikely to hold.
The Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict offers one of the most frustrating cases of “bothsidesism” on display in the world. Azerbaijan attacks, and then carries out the sleight-of-hand immortalized by the X-Files TV show: deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate. The media, thin on the ground, lazily reports that clashes “erupted,” and the sides blamed each other; the implication is of faintly ridiculous squabbling tribes, neither of which could possibly be blameless.
Luckily, in this case, French and U.S. officials at least we’re not completely fooled, with President Emmanuel Macron, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and others ultimately making clear that Azerbaijan was at fault. Specifically, Baku’s forces launched deadly cross-border attacks deep into Armenian territory on Sept. 13-14, which resulted in hundreds killed, thousands displaced, and apparent war crimes.
In recent days, Azerbaijani Telegram channels circulated a video displaying the execution, at point-blank range, of at least six unarmed Armenian prisoners of war by Azerbaijani forces, likely during the September invasion. The video sparked horror and was widely condemned, including by the U.S. State Department, French Foreign Ministry, UK Embassy, and EU External Action Service, all of which called on Azerbaijani authorities to investigate the killings.
The EU and the world community must do significantly more.
Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general did promise to investigate. But to be meaningful an investigation needs to be impartial, and the idea of this happening in Azerbaijan is absurd.
Countless cases of torture, mutilations, decapitations and killings of Armenians civilians and POWs have surfaced since Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, launched a brutal war two years ago to reclaim the autonomous and Armenian indigenous-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
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Azerbaijan was similarly urged to act then. A few people were arrested, but no trials or convictions took place. At least one of the soldiers arrested then was recently awarded a medal for his military service.
Any confusion about the nature of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s two-faced and dictatorial regime need only recall Ramil Safarov, who in 2004, was sentenced in Hungary to life in prison for axe-murdering an Armenian in his sleep. Eight years later, he was extradited to Azerbaijan to serve out the rest of his sentence, whereupon the government pardoned and declared him a national hero.
Indeed, so-called “Armenophobia” is a long-established phenomenon and even state policy in Azerbaijan, with public figures and government officials frequently inciting ethnic hatred against Armenians, as recently observed by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Azerbaijan will no more investigate its crimes than Russia will prosecute its own in Ukraine. And the international community does not go through the charade of requesting such a thing. Instead, less than three weeks after Russia’s invasion, the United Nations established the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine to investigate war crimes and human rights violations.