German human rights NGOs have issued a joint statement regarding the start of trials of Armenian prisoners in Azerbaijan, warning of a politically motivated show trial and calling for German embassy staff to observe the proceedings.
“The accused are civilians, including eight democratically elected leaders. By imprisoning them and criminalizing them in court, Azerbaijan is turning victims into perpetrators and concealing its own crime against Artsakh,” says Sarah Reinke, head of human rights work at the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) in Göttingen. Together with the Central Council of Armenians in Germany (ZAD), the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) and the Working Group on Recognition, against Genocide, for International Understanding (AGA), the Society for Threatened Peoples demands that these politically motivated trials must be observed by German embassy staff.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan attacked Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing 100,000 Armenians to flee. This was preceded by a nine-month blockade in violation of orders from the International Court of Justice. Human rights organizations and international lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo have deemed both the blockade and the expulsion to be acts of genocide.
Instead of holding those responsible in Azerbaijan, above all President Ilham Aliyev, accountable for this crime before an international court, a show trial against Armenians is now being staged in Baku, explain the spokespeople for the NGOs.
“Politics is influencing the Azerbaijani judiciary, which is characterized by systematic corruption and violations of internationally recognized rights. Judges are often expected to reflect the interests of the government in their rulings, and members of the political opposition, journalists and activists are repeatedly experiencing this first hand, they explain further,” the NGOs says.
They note that “the German government did not call out Azerbaijan in 2023 when the Armenians were being displaced on a massive scale, but instead maintained its relations with dictator Aliyev during and after the event as if nothing had happened.” “Now it is only right and proper that at least these trials be observed and that pressure be put on for the immediate release of those concerned, the human rights organizations appeal to the Foreign Office in Berlin,” the human rights advocates say.
