Siranush Sahakyan: Azerbaijanis, instead of addressing humanitarian issues, generate only hatred towards Armenians. “Publication”

The interlocutor of “Hraparak” is Siranush Sahakyan, representative of Armenian prisoners of war at the ECHR, human rights defender.

– After the elections held in Armenia, Aliyev’s adviser Hikmet Hajiyev visited Armenia, but the fate of the Armenian prisoners of war is unknown. Is there any change in the issue of prisoners of war?

– We do not have a positive record of positive changes, at the moment they only enjoy some rights, for example, they have phone calls with family members. And there are alarms that the health condition of many of the prisoners of war is getting worse and worse, and we are also observing a decline in their psychological condition. The uncertainty has a very negative impact on the physical and psychological health of the Armenians there. There is also no movement for them in terms of reestablishing their ties with the outside world. There are several initiatives now, one of which is the initiative of the wife of Mr. Ruben Vardanyan, which is a human rights initiative and has a very humanitarian nature with the involvement of foreign female human rights defenders. The initiative made a request to the human rights defender of Azerbaijan to allow a short visit to transfer personal items and letters.

We are watching what reaction the Azerbaijani government will give, by the way, we are also watching the Azerbaijani public reactions, we studied them, and I can say that they were not positive, to put it mildly, Azerbaijanis, instead of addressing humanitarian issues, generate exclusively hatred towards Armenians, which shows what the public sentiments of Azerbaijan are. Basically, nothing has changed in their mood. As for the families of the prisoners, we are in contact with them, we are working on various initiatives, but I will have the opportunity to talk about them later. In any case, we act openly and if we apply to any structure, we will choose the format of an open letter, so everyone will have the opportunity to learn about our steps. Let me reiterate that we are following the processes of the appellate court, in parallel, we are taking preparatory steps so that the violations that occurred during the mock trials and the issues of illegal verdicts are raised in the European Court of Human Rights. Thursday’s verdict also showed us that it may be late, but it is possible to achieve justice through the European Court and international courts.

Hayk GEVORGIAN

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