Aliyev Made a Promise in the Presence of the ECHR President and Did Not Fulfill It: Pashinyan Details

Azerbaijan is attempting to turn the return of Armenian prisoners into a bargaining chip. This was stated by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during a lecture at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations in Clingendael entitled 'Armenia and the Netherlands: Centuries-Old Friendship - 30 Years of Partnership,' while responding to questions from attendees.

'Unfortunately, despite the November 9, 2020 statement and numerous calls from international organizations, our citizens captured during the 44-day war have not been returned, which is incomprehensible. This is behavior that uses people for political purposes and turns them into a commodity, which is condemnable,' said Pashinyan.

The Prime Minister recalled that when the issue of prisoners was raised, Azerbaijan tried to turn it into a bargaining chip by proposing to exchange maps of mined areas held by the Armenian side. 'When we saw that an attempt was being made to exchange people for maps, we made a political decision that trading was outside our value system. Azerbaijan insisted that every day people were dying on the remaining mined fields from the war, releasing numbers, and I personally made a political decision that this trade should not take place, and we handed over all our maps to Azerbaijan, hoping that a humanitarian step would follow this humanitarian step.'

After that, Azerbaijan began to declare that those maps were not very accurate. We said, 'It’s not that we kept good maps for ourselves and gave you bad ones; what we have is what we gave you.' They also tried to turn this into an object of political speculation but did not notice one thing—that the data regarding civilian casualties due to mine explosions disappeared from their newsfeed after the exchange of maps,' said the Prime Minister.

Pashinyan emphasized that the Armenian side did this to show its sincerity about the peace agenda and its commitment to it. 'Until today, at least 38 captured individuals continue to remain in Azerbaijan. There is a continuous attempt to turn this process into a bargaining chip on various topics. By the way, the last time in the presence of the President of the European Court of Human Rights, the Azerbaijani leader promised that a new group of prisoners would be released, but this has not happened to date. I believe that it is impossible to talk about peace while ignoring the humanitarian aspect of the issue; we have practically demonstrated this,' said Pashinyan.

The Armenian Prime Minister stressed the importance of the international community being aware of this situation. Pashinyan called on the international community to continue urging Azerbaijan not to turn people into political bargaining chips. 'The war has brought tragedy to many, but I do not think that the approach of constantly pouring salt on that open wound fits the value system particular to the 21st century,' noted the Prime Minister.