News - Armenia MP at PACE: Azerbaijan illegally, immorally holds huge number of Armenians in captivity

Armen Gevorgyan, a member of the Armenia National Assembly (NA) Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), on Tuesday delivered an address during the debates on the topic, entitled “The challenge of far-right ideology to democracy and human rights in Europe,” held within the framework of the PACE Autumn Session, the NA informs. “Dear Colleagues: This Report is presented by a member of the ruling party of a country that just accomplished a complete ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh against its indigenous Armenian population. It's quite strange that a representative of Azerbaijan is presenting report on the issue of human rights and democratic governance. Far-right ideologies most of the time consist of nationalist, xenophobic, militaristic, and authoritarian sentiments. All these have been present in Azerbaijan for decades. The recent ethnic cleansings in Nagorno-Karabakh shall not be viewed as only an Armenian concern. Creating such precedents will give incentives for war aggression to many other dictatorships sitting on large reserves of natural gas and oil and will promote of far-right ideology approaches. Today Azerbaijan illegally and immorally holds in captivity a big number of Armenians. Among them are persons who had in the past 25 years been elected in democratic elections and as legitimate representatives of their people had been leading them for freedom and self-determination. In contrast, Azerbaijan has had the same ruling family for exactly 30 years now, and counting. Is this a form of far-right ideology, or a new type of democracy that has been nurtured under the Council of Europe umbrella? Colleagues: The leadership of this Assembly received a report I have co-authored in April 2022, titled “ Weaponizing Religion and Potential Consequences for European Democratic Security. ” The report was prepared to provide the Assembly with supporting evidence and overview of the established state practice by the Governments of Azerbaijan and Turkey of certain policies aimed at racially and religiously inspired by violations of human rights against Armenians, as well as attempts of mobilizing Muslim societies against Armenia, Armenians and against European countries in general. It decisively showed that Governments of those countries had conspired to abuse the European liberal laws and values and through makeshift ‘loopholes’ ventured to create controversies inside Europe and against Europe. The main goal, in my view, has been and continues to be the creation of new forms of solidarity in Europe - as a bargaining chip in the relations with European states. These efforts to proactively use Turkic diasporal structures in Europe for the purposes of establishing new forms of solidarity means nothing else by attempts of weaponizing religion in multicultural European societies, which shall be a matter of concern for European security. Let me conclude by saying that, in order to stop the spreading of far-right radicalism, the Council of Europe has to make a crucial homework to self clean up and suspend the membership of authoritarian states, ” the Armenian MP noted.