EU Parliament members Marek Jurek and Costas Mavrides call on Azerbaijan to stop using civilians as a human shield

On July 4, 2017 Azerbaijani armed forces violated the cease-fire regime in the contact line. Azerbaijan had installed a multiple rocket launcher system in an inhabited village, thus using its own civilian population as a human shield. The cross-fire resulted in a tragic loss of two civilians on the Azerbaijani side.

We deplore the loss of two innocent lives and emphasize that this tragedy, as well as other clashes between the armed forced could have certainly been avoided, if Azerbaijan agreed to install an independent investigative mechanism to determine which side exactly violates the cease-fire. The OSCE Minsk-Group has proposed this on several occasions. The Armenian side has agreed to install this mechanism. Unfortunately, official Azerbaijan continues to reject it.

We would like to recall that the investigative mechanism could have helped to avoid the April war of 2016, during which Azerbaijan shelled Armenian villages that resulted in the death of 12-year-old Vaghinak Grigoryan, who was on his way to school. The bodies of an elderly 90-year-old couple in the village of Talish, were brutally mutilated by the Azerbaijani forces, their ears were cut off.  Since April 2016 the Azerbaijan armed forces have committed war crimes, including an ISIS-style beheading of an Armenian soldier Karam Sloyan. Pictures of the head were then posted on the social media by the Azerbaijani forces as a trophy and the cruel murder was praised as a heroic act.

These barbaric acts are unfortunately an indirect consequence of Armenophobia in Azerbaijan, nurtured from the highest levels and acts, such as elevating Ramil Safarov, who killed an Armenian colleague in his sleep with an ax in Budapest, to a national hero by the current Government of Azerbaijan.

The losses on both sides are tragic and they must absolutely be prevented. It is unacceptable to use a population as a human shield while shelling other inhabited areas and then abuse photos for propaganda purposes. An investigative mechanism must be immediately installed.

We herewith call on Azerbaijan to stop using its own population as a human shield and install the OSCE independent investigative mechanism which would create favorable conditions for trust and negotiations.

MEP Marek Jurek (ECR, Poland)
MEP Costas Mavrides (S&D, Cyprus)

12th of July 2017, Brussels