Azerbaijan mocks war-fallen Armenian soldiers in public park

Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliyev, inaugurated in Baku, the capital of the country, a “Military Trophy Park”, an authentic horror museum displaying the helmets of fallen Armenian soldiers during the war that Azerbaijan waged, with the support of Turkey, against Armenia through the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, in September 2020.

The fighting ended just over a month later, after an intervention by the Russian President’s mediator Vladimir Poutine, with the victory of the Azeri troops, who occupied part of the Armenian enclave who proclaimed independence from Azerbaijan in 1991. At least four thousand Armenian soldiers died in the conflict and others 1,600 they disappeared. The conflict has claimed the lives of some 2,800 Azerbaijani military.

During the inauguration of the park, which includes the display of mannequins depicting dying or humiliating Armenian soldiers, and Armenian military equipment captured during the conflict, Aliyev addressed his army staff and posed under the poster at the entrance under the slogan “Karabakh comes from Azerbaijan”.

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Armenian government and civil society strongly reject Aliyev’s initiative, an autocrat who wears 18 years to the presidency, which he “inherited” from his father, who led 1969 to 2003 this former Soviet republic. For the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the park seeks to “publicly degrade the memory of war victims, missing persons and prisoners of war, by violating the rights and dignity of their families”.

One of the most disturbing scenes in the park is the depiction of Armenian soldiers “chained” to their commanders, an allusion to the fake news as the Azeri trolls revealed, who claimed that the Armenian soldiers wanted to escape the war.

These scenes are particularly painful, recalled the Foreign Ministry of Yerevan, “When many Armenian prisoners of war are being held in Azerbaijani captivity. This anti-human behavior of Azerbaijani senior leadership is more expressive than any statement or public relations campaign on peace, tolerance and multiculturalism. There are at least a hundred Armenians in captivity that Baku refuses to release.

The uncertain future of Nagorno-Karabakh

Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory populated by Armenians

Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority Armenian territory, seized from Azerbaijan shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union, triggering a three-year war that sparked 30,000 dead Yes hundreds of thousands of refugees of both areas. Since then, there have been several armed clashes, but none like the one last year.

Encouraged by Turkey, which seeks to extend its influence more and more – already actively participates in conflicts in Syria and Libya– Aliyev ordered an attack on the Armenian enclave on September 27 and at the end of a month, he succeeded in seizing part of the territory.

Today, the Azerbaijani president went even further and suggested that his goal was to capture Yerevan, the Armenian capital, which he in the past referred to as Azerbaijani territory. “I said we would go back. The time will come, we will, ”he said.