ArmInfo.During a meeting with newly appointed Ambassador of France to Armenia, Anne Louyot, RA Human Rights Defender (HRD) Arman Tatoyan, pointed to the established high cooperation with former Ambassador Jonathan Lacote, and expressed confidence that it will be continued in the same spirit.
As reported by the office of the RA Ombudsman, the RA HRD highly appreciated the professional and selfless work of French journalists during the war (in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Ed. note) in September-November 2020.
During the meeting, Arman Tatoyan presented to the Ambassador the facts confirming the violation of the rights of the residents of the borderland of the Republic of Armenia by the armed forces of Azerbaijan.
He noted that issues related to the state border of the Republic of Armenia should be considered from the point of view of human rights in order to prevent them from being pushed aside, limiting the state's ability to protect these rights, and that human rights and security should complement each other and not oppose each other.
The RA Human Rights Defender added that as a result of the criminal actions of Azerbaijan, people were deprived of houses, lands and meadows that belonged to them in Soviet times, as a result of which not only social, but also serious security problems arose.
Arman Tatoyan stressed that delimitation and demarcation of the border with Azerbaijan without creating a security zone, without removing the Azerbaijani armed servicemen will not only fail to ensure the rights of RA citizens and especially residents of the RA border area, but will cause new violations of rights and new tensions.
At the same time, he noted that the main reason and source of violation by the Azerbaijani armed forces of the rights of the civilian population of the Republic of Armenia is the policy of hatred and enmity carried out by the Azerbaijani authorities, which after the war reached an extreme level-to the fascism.
"In the context of such a policy, the security zone becomes even more necessary. Moreover, this is reflected in an international document - the PACE resolution of September 27, 2021," he said. The RA Human Rights Defender also stressed that all the servicemen of the Armenian side and civilians illegally detained in Azerbaijan have the status of prisoners of war and must be immediately released, returned to their homeland without any political or other preconditions. Instead, he said, the Azerbaijani authorities are artificially delaying and politicizing this process, grossly violating the rights of prisoners 1and their families, causing them suffering and causing tension in society.
At the meeting, the parties reached agreements on expanding the sectors of joint activity.