armenpress.am: Azerbaijan’s policy of ethnic and religious hatred has a clear goal – to evict Armenians from Artsakh and carry out ethnic cleansing, Human Rights Defender of Artsakh Gegham Stepanyan said during a discussion today relating to Azerbaijan’s ethnic hatred policy and its consequences.

"The policy of ethnic and religious hatred by Azerbaijan has been carried out also during the Soviet years, and the authorities of the Azerbaijani SSR have always run a policy for making the life of Armenians in the territory of Artsakh not so favorable," he said.

According to him, after the first Artsakh war when the ceasefire was signed, it seemed it was possible to ensure the security of Artsakh and its residents’ right to life on its own, but after that Azerbaijan’s policy of Armenophobia further deepened. "It entered schools, various specific events were being organized, everything was done to bring up a generation in Azerbaijan that literally hates and doesn’t tolerate the Armenian people, moreover, the Armenian Christian people, because there are the two components both the ethnic hatred and the religious one," he said.

The Ombudsman of Artsakh said they witnessed that hatred during the 2020 war because Azerbaijanis were not only brutally killing and torturing the Armenian soldiers, but also were desecrating the Armenian Christian heritage.