Azerbaijan, which is preparing to host COP29 on November 11, continues its disastrous program of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh with impunity. This was stated in the statement of the head of the "France-Armenia" inter-parliamentary friendship group, Gilbert-Luc Devinaz, which was distributed by the press service of the French Senate.
"Azerbaijan starved the population of Nagorno-Karabakh for 10 months by closing the Lachin corridor, and then forced the entire population to leave Nagorno-Karabakh.
Baku still holds several arbitrarily arrested politicians of the Artsakh Republic in prison and continues its work of destroying Armenian heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh. In order not to incite these crimes against humanity with impunity before the start of COP29, the friendship group calls on the international community to step up its conditions, demanding from Azerbaijan: the unconditional and immediate release of political prisoners; the immediate dispatch of a UNESCO mission to Nagorno-Karabakh for the protection of Armenian heritage.
Enabling Artsakh refugees to exercise their right to return in complete safety, according to the International Court of Justice decision. In early October, the Azerbaijani authorities razed a large part of the historic center of Stepanakert to the ground. These actions, which aim to erase all traces of thousands of years of history, are comparable in Iraq. , with the crimes committed by ISIS in Syria and Libya, which UNESCO later described as "cultural genocide".
The Aliyev regime confirms its intentions to not allow refugees from Nagorno Karabakh to return to their homeland," the head of the friendship group emphasized.
