Armenian human rights defender accuses Azerbaijani authorities of committing new war crimes

YEREVAN, February 4. /ARKA/. Azerbaijani authorities are holding Armenian servicemen and civilians as prisoners for receiving political and military dividends, Armenian human rights defender Arman Tatoyan told a press conference on Friday.

Tatoyan stressed that Baku is holding prisoners without any grounds, with grave violations of humanitarian laws and at the risk of their lives in order to gain political and military dividends.

"Obviously, sometimes it is a trafficking" in people, as we have already seen. This is absolutely unacceptable and is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law," he said.

Tatoyan said that it is necessary to show the international community that holding Armenians as prisoners is in fact a new war crime being committed by Azerbaijan.

"Holding our prisoners for so long for these purposes is nothing but a war crime. And the trials they are holding are nothing but a cover-up and a reason, an excuse for the outside world why they are delaying the return of the prisoners to their homeland," he explained.

Tatoyan stressed that sometimes the Azerbaijani side obstructs international structures, so there is no effective international protection measure in place except for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"Peace, first of all, means trust between the two nations, but the Azerbaijani authorities not only refuse to return our prisoners, they are playing with the emotions of our society, contributing thus to tension rise, causing mental suffering to the families of our prisoners and missing people, also purposefully supporting the enmity between the two nations," he said.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, there are approximately 300 people still missing from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict escalation in 2020, A story on its website says since a ceasefire agreement was signed in November 2020, the remains of more than 1,700 people have been It said also that on top of the hundreds of people missing from the November 2020 escalation, there are more than 4,500 people missing from the conflict dating from the 1990s.found.

The ICRC is the only major humanitarian organization present across the region in relation to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. -0-