Artsakh Human Rights Defender Gegham Stepanyan issued the following statement today.

The genocidal acts committed against the Armenians of Artsakh at the beginning of the 20th century, the 70-year persecution of the Armenians after the annexation of Artsakh to Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921, the systematic discrimination and ethnic hatred, the atrocities committed by Azerbaijan since 1988 in Sumgait, Baku, Gandzak-Kirovabad and other places to suppress the free expression of will of the Armenians of Artsakh, the war imposed in the 1990s, the 2016 April aggression, the 44-day war of 2020, which is full of war crimes, all the criminal actions taken by the military-political leadership of Azerbaijan since November 9, 2020 are an attempt to nullify the collective measures taken by the international community over decades after the Second World War to prevent such crimes.

Azerbaijan is publicly giving a 'master class on the destruction and deportation of a specific ethnic group' to the world, which fails to make any statement condemning it.

That is why Azerbaijan is developing its arsenal of tools and means of committing crimes almost every day, that is why the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan, openly violating the provisions of the Trilateral statement of November 9, 2020, dare to occupy civilian communities, to leave more than 120,000 people without heating and hot water, forcibly displace them. It can be listed endlessly.

Such arguments of the Azerbaijani side considering the disruption of gas supply and the humanitarian catastrophe resulting from it as a matter of its internal affairs were once made by the leadership of Nazi Germany during the Nuremberg trial to justify the atrocity crimes.

Dear representatives of the international community, the facts and evidence are more than enough to enforce the principle of 'responsibility to protect' adopted to prevent genocide, crimes against humanity, and mass crimes, to recognize the Artsakh Republic and save the Armenians of Artsakh from ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Please realize that there is no other option; the criminal must be punished and not negotiated with.