CANBERRA: The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) Executive Board have published a powerful statement condemning the latest Azerbaijani Aggression against the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Artsakh, whilst raising severe concern over the risk of Genocide against Armenians in the region, reported the Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU).
This statement, from the foremost global historical authority on genocides, has explicitly detailed the incursion and assault against the sovereign borders of Armenia before addressing the body's concerns that “significant genocide risk factors exist in the Nagorno-Karabakh situation concerning the Armenian population”.
In their statement published on the 24th of October 2022, the IAGS Executive Board also addressed the public and indisputable hate speech and hate propaganda by Azerbaijani authorities targeting Armenians.
The statement acknowledges that comments made by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev––such as “Armenia as a country is of no value. It is actually a colony, an outpost run from abroad, a territory artificially created on ancient Azerbaijani lands”––explicitly violate the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and are statements that risk inciting genocide and international crimes.
The IAGS Executive Board also vocalised their concerns over cultural desecration and neglect of Armenian sites in the occupied regions of the Republic of Artsakh. In what the European Parliament called “historical revisionism”, the IAGS similarly highlights Azerbaijan's long-held attempts to create historical “alternative narratives” with a worrying precedent of undertaking cultural erasure and genocide.
“Rewriting of history and cultural destruction are key hallmarks of genocide. The goal of genocidaires is to destroy, in whole or in part, the targeted group, and one way the perpetrators carry out this destruction is through cultural destruction: eliminating the very essence of the group’s identity, and any trace that they existed in that location,” the statement read.
The IAGS Executive Board went on to call on the international community to condemn Azerbaijan’s acts of violence and hate speech, comply with the International Court of Justice Provisional Measures order of 7 December 2021, remove its armed forces from the sovereign borders of Armenia and respect the rights of self-determination of the Armenians of Artsakh as guaranteed under the United Nations Charter (Chapter I, Article 2).
The IAGS Executive board finally called on the international community to hold the Aliyev petro-dictatorship accountable for its “crimes of aggression”, “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”.
The Armenian National Committee of Australia has expressed their sincere thanks for this clear and principled statement.
“We thank the IAGS Executive Board, the leading global authority for genocide studies, for spotlighting Azerbaijan’s brutal acts of aggression against Armenians,” said ANC-AU Executive Director Michael Kolokossian.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars is a global, interdisciplinary, non-partisan body tasked with researching and teaching about the nature, causes and consequences of Genocide, presided over by its Australian President Melanie O’Brien––Associate Professor in International Law, UWA Law School at the University of Western Australia.
