AZERBAIJAN VIOLATES FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF ARMENIAN POWS

PanARMENIAN.Net
25.02.2010 17:06 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ 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 Nagorno Karabakh Republic state commission
on prisoners of war, missing persons, and hostages said in statement.

"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’.

Although it’s obvious 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, 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.

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.

We call on the international structures concerned, and first of all
the ICRC, to react correspondingly and urge Azerbaijan to respect
fundamental human rights," the statement said.