Human Rights Defender of Armenia completes report on new evidence of Azerbaijan`s war crimes in 44- day war

ArmInfo. Human Rights Defender of Armenia Arman Tatoyan has completed his report on the new evidence of Azerbaijan's war crimes during the 44-day war, which will be sent to the law-enforcement agencies, courts of general jurisdiction and to the foreign offices of different states.

"To demonstrate the amount of the work done, I can say 245 videos and 120 pictures showing torture, murders and atrocities have been sent as documentary evidence," Mr Tatoyan's report reads.  Among the facts are: murders of POWs and civilians; torture of POWs and civilians, degrading treatment including beheading, amputation, etc..; abuse of corpses of servicemen and civilians; destruction of civilians and settlements using the banned belt-type weapons; hiring of mercenaries (terrorists) in the war against Artsakh; use of chemical weapons of mass destruction; war unleashed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which paralyzed the Armenian and Artsakh healthcare systems, which  caused a sharp increase in death rates; facts of torture of POWs and civilians for religious reasons, destruction and desecration of churches, policy of eradicating their identity; illegally managing Armenian POWs' social network pages by Azerbaijani servicemen and formenting interethnic strife; procrastination of repatriation of POWs for political reasons (de facto human traffic) thereby causing mental suffering to their families.  The videos are translated from the Azerbaijani and Russian, with Russian and English subtitles. The videos were analyzed, with reports by the Human Rights Defenders of Armenia and Artsakh (Ruben Melikyan, Artak Beglaryan and Gegham Stepanyan) for 2016-2022 and by NGOs attached (in English).

"Moreover, where possible, we indicated the agencies that, as we believe, are responsible for the crimes.  We also name individual officials. We have demonstrated that the crimes are the result of the policy of hatred and hostility toward Armenians, and of ethnic cleansing and this threat remains now as well. The videos contain the logo of the Human Rights Defenders of Armenia to prove their authenticity. This is my second post-war report. We have followed a somewhat different way. Let us see the results of this process.  In any case, we must do our best to hold responsible all those who committed human rights violations against our nationals, war crimes and crimes against humanity to prevent them in the future. All the materials will also be sent to international organizations (UN, CE, EU, etc..). The work is the result of combined efforts of the staffs and experts, Human Rights Defenders of Armenia and Artsakh and their partners," the report reads.