BAKU, Azerbaijan, January 16. We condemn the baseless and slanderous statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia dated January 15, 2025, which claims about the lawlessness allegedly committed against Armenians in the Azerbaijani SSR, and the tone of the statement is reminiscent of Armenia's previous rhetoric before the Second Karabakh War, the statement of the Western Azerbaijan Community said, Trend reports.
“First of all, let us emphasize that the state that carried out ethnic cleansing is Armenia. The famous speech of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, whose years of government coincided with the period of occupation of Azerbaijani lands and implementation of a significant part of the policy of ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijanis, made by him as president in 1993, once again confirms that ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijanis was the state policy of Armenia.
In addition, it would be appropriate to recall that Ter-Petrosyan stated in this speech that the resettlement of Armenians from the Azerbaijan SSR was organized by Armenia itself. Below is a relevant excerpt from Ter-Petrosyan's speech:
“If the movement had not started in time, there would be 500,000 Armenians left in Azerbaijan today. Even if they had not been physically annihilated, this would have been the most powerful lever that would have brought Armenia to its knees. A substantial part of them, more than 300,000 people, found refuge in Armenia. This was a national problem, a problem of great scale, which was solved thanks to our movement”.
This all proves that Armenia, by organizing the resettlement of Armenians from those regions of Azerbaijan, the occupation of which it considered impossible, pursued the goal of eliminating the practice of peaceful coexistence of representatives of the two peoples and creating a mono-ethnic state in Armenia.
Instead of making slanderous and hateful statements, the Armenian government should put an end to its racist and mono-ethnic policy, create conditions for the return of Western Azerbaijanis, and restore a multi-ethnic environment there,” the community's statement emphasizes.
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