Yerevan on Thursday (October 14th) asked the highest UN court to end the "
cycle of hatred
" established by Azerbaijan towards Armenians, as the two countries clash in international justice.
Armenia and Azerbaijan, at war last year for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, have filed appeals with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, accusing each other of discrimination racial.
Read also Armenian Karabakh: survival operation
The ICJ, which adjudicates disputes between states, is holding hearings in the proceedings this week and next.
This could take several years.
Armenia, speaking first before Azerbaijan gives its arguments next week, called on the court to take urgent measures to protect the Armenians while the request is considered.
"Culture of fear and hate"
"
With this remedy, Armenia seeks to prevent and remedy the cycle of violence and hatred perpetrated against ethnic Armenians
," Yeghishe Kirakosyan, representative of Armenia, told a hearing. "
Armenia urgently seeks to protect the rights of ethnic Armenians against imminent irreparable harm
," he added.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev openly admitted that in September 2020 his country started the six-week conflict, fueling the chain of ethnic violence and hatred, he continued. "
We fear that it will not be the last until the roots of this conflict are addressed,
" said the representative of Yerevan. The Azerbaijani authorities are indoctrinating the population, "
generation after generation
", into a "
culture of fear and hatred of all things Armenian,
" Yeghishe Kirakosyan said.
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought in the fall of 2020 a short war, killing more than 6,500, for the enclave of Nagorno Karabakh which had already been the subject of a bloody war in the 1990s. The fall conflict ended in the defeat of Armenia, forced to cede several regions forming a glacis around the separatist enclave.
Despite the signing of a ceasefire and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers, tensions remain high between the two former Soviet republics.
