RA Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan wrote on his Facebook page:

“Yesterday, on 31 December, 2020, the President of Azerbaijan, speaking about the Armenian servicemen held captive in that country, stated that they are not prisoners of war. He stated that they had been arrested and described them as terrorists.

As the ombudsman of Armenia, I especially note that such statements grossly violate the post-war humanitarian process and international human rights requirements.

The statement of the President of Azerbaijan directly contradicts the requirement of paragraph 8 of the trilateral statement of 9 November, 2020, which refers to the exchange of prisoners or other detainees.

Armenian servicemen captured by Azerbaijani servicemen must be released immediately and returned to Armenia. It must be done immediately and without any preconditions: they are prisoners of war.

Moreover, both during the hostilities and after their cessation, the Azerbaijani authorities constantly violated international human rights requirements and humanitarian agreements. The return of the captives is artificially delayed, their real number does not appear, during which the torture and inhuman treatment of them continued, the purposeful publication of videos testifying that, the exchange of the bodies of the victims is hindered, and so on.

The studies and reports of the Human Rights Defender of Armenia confirm that all this is aimed at causing mental suffering to the families of the captives, playing with the emotions of the Armenian society and causing tension in our country.

The monitoring clearly confirms that in the case of the Azerbaijani authorities, it is necessary to always act with concrete guarantees that will ensure the smooth implementation of humanitarian agreements and the inviolability of international human rights requirements.

Therefore, I draw the attention of the international community, and especially international organizations with a mandate to protect human rights, to the above-mentioned statement of the President of Azerbaijan, to exclude any violation of the humanitarian process, to ensure its strict compliance with international human rights requirements.”