CoE Human Rights Commissioner O’Flaherty highlights plight of Armenian prisoners in Azerbaijan

While addressing members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Monday, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Michael O’Flaherty stated that the situation of Nagorno-Karabakh prisoners in Azerbaijan had to be ‘a matter of very high priority’.

The statement came as part of a Q&A session held after O’Flaherty presented his first annual report to the assembled MPs.

During the Q&A session, Armen Gevorgyan, a member of the Armenian delegation to PACE, asked O’Flaherty what actions he was prepared to take to ‘assess the human rights violations already committed, to prevent further abuses, and to ensure fair treatment and protection of Armenian prisoners in Baku in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights’.

In response, O’Flaherty stated that he was already in discussions with the Azerbaijani government to visit the country, though they were still ‘seeking a time’ that would work for both sides.

‘I’ve approached them now twice, I will return a third time and a fourth time, but I do want to visit the country to engage all the human rights issues of people on the territory’, O’Flaherty said, noting that that was as much as he could say regarding the question beyond assuring Gevorgyan that he was ‘by no means neglecting’ the issue.

Later during the session, O’Flaherty responded to comments by Civil Contract faction MP Arusyak Julhakyan, noting that it was important to protect the human rights of everybody in the region, ‘including ensuring that those who wish to return to [Nagorno-Karabakh] are free to do so’.

‘This will be critical to the future’, O’Flaherty emphasised, while also encouraging Armenians to ‘continue to give a warm welcome to those people you have received from [Nagorno-Karabakh]’.

In response to O’Flaherty’s comments, Azerbaijani pro-government media outlet Azernews published a critique by the so-called Western Azerbaijan Community.

‘Western Azerbaijan’ is an irredentist concept commonly used by the Azerbaijani authorities to lay claim to the territory of modern-day Armenia. The Western Azerbaijan Community gained prominence following the end of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War when it was popularised by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

‘It is unacceptable that the High Commissioner addresses the issue of the return of Armenians to Azerbaijan and does not mention the return of Western Azerbaijanis to their ancestral homeland in Armenia. We call on the High Commissioner not to be held hostage to the deeply rooted double standards policy in a number of Western institutions regarding human rights’, the community’s statement read.

They additionally urged O’Flaherty to ‘instead call on Armenia to prosecute war criminals within its own territory’, noting that it was a double standard that he remained ‘silent on justice for Azerbaijani victims’.

Azerbaijan has officially acknowledged its custody of 23 Armenian prisoners, including former Nagorno-Karabakh state officials. Previously, in March, Armenia claimed Armenian prisoners in Azerbaijan had been subjected to torture, citing evidence observed in photos published by Azerbaijan.