Naira Zohrabyan Calls to Initiate Baku's Nuremberg at PACE

On the opening day of the winter session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), MP Naira Zohrabyan spoke about the massacres in Baku, urging the international community to provide a legal assessment of the genocidal acts committed by Azerbaijan 30 years ago. Zohrabyan pointed out that Azerbaijani fascism is no less brutal than Hitler's fascism, stating that it is time to initiate Baku's Nuremberg.

This was reported by Naira Zohrabyan. The full text of the MP’s speech is as follows:

“Dear colleagues, 30 years ago, around this time, a seven-day-long massacre of the Armenian population took place in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku. The Baku massacres were clearly planned and organized actions by the Azerbaijani authorities aimed at one goal: to kill and eliminate the Armenian people. They were killed simply for being Armenian, as anti-Armenian sentiment in Azerbaijan is state policy.

The genocidal actions against Armenians in Azerbaijan have still not received proper political and, more importantly, legal evaluation from the international community. The crimes committed on ethnic grounds three decades ago have no right to remain as a closed chapter of history. I assure you, the factual data regarding the massacres of Armenians in Baku, Sumgait, Maragha, and other Armenian-populated areas in Azerbaijan are certainly no less than the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II, and I assure you, Azerbaijani fascism is as brutal as Hitler's fascism.

One of the witnesses of the horrors in Baku recounted that during those days of Black January, bonfires were lit in many streets of Baku, and people were thrown alive into the fire, tortured and killed simply for being Armenian.

Dear colleagues, the Council of Europe’s Committee on “Against Racism and Intolerance” once published a report stating that Azerbaijan's political elite, educational institutions, and media propagate hatred against Armenians, raising a whole generation with intolerance towards Armenians. Unfortunately, apart from declarative statements, there has been no clear legal evaluation of Azerbaijan's genocidal acts, and this gap of impunity has given birth and will give birth to new crimes, to new Ramil Safarovs, to atrocities in the spirit of ISIS, as occurred on the first days of April 2016.

The anti-Armenian sentiment in Azerbaijan has reached such proportions that it has become one of the main threats to regional stability and security. Silence has consistently worked in favor of the perpetrators. It is time to initiate Baku's Nuremberg.”