They Are POWs, Not Detainees
Why US Officials Classifying Armenian POWs As Detainees is Detrimental
Op-Ed:
There are still some 250 Armenian prisoners of war (POWs) in Azerbaijan captivity nearly five months since the Russian brokered tri-lateral ceasefire statement was signed, which includes that all POWs must be repatriated.
Immediately following my official interview last week with former POW Maral Najarian, I spoke with her to ensure she was okay as I realize it must have been difficult for her to share vivid details of a horrifying ordeal. Najarian, who was released last month after being unlawfully imprisoned by the Azerbaijan government, was also subjected to psychological torture.
What is the fate of the remaining POWs ?
Words matter when it comes to the protection of every Armenian POW, including women, in Azerbaijan captivity. Playing word games with their lives should cause international outrage but instead there is continued silence.
To classify POWs as detainees is stripping the protection afforded to them under the Geneva Convention. This will also inevitably lead to their continued torture and further delay their release, without Azerbaijan being held accountable. Human Rights Watch (HRW) also recently published multiple scathing reports documenting evidence based firsthand accounts of torture and inhuman treatment of Armenian POWs by the Azerbaijan government.
Just last week, US Ambassador to Armenia Lynne Tracy reportedly referred to the Armenian POWs as “detainees” during a March 30 discussion in Yerevan with Garegin II, Armenian Catholicos of Echmiadzin, and she went on to state she hopes for their “safe and expeditious return.” I would view that as contradictory.
On January 20th, Ambassador Tracy issued a statement condemning the acts and atrocities connected with the Artsakh conflict but once again referred to Armenian POWs as detainees. “The United States continues to call for the swift and safe return of the remaining detainees. We condemn the acts of atrocities connected with the conflict. Those responsible must be held to account,” she wrote.
In a 2020 Executive summary published by the US Department of State titled Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Azerbaijan also classified Armenian POWS as “detainees”.
“In early October, two videos surfaced on social media of Azerbaijani soldiers humiliating and executing two Armenian detainees in the town of Hadrut,” the report states.
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs continues to deny holding Armenian POWs captive and claims they are “saboteurs” or “terrorists”. This is a false narrative claimed by the Azerbaijan government as an excuse NOT to release these prisoners of war.
“The statement that anyone detained after the end of conflict cannot be considered as POWs is manipulative and legally baseless,” international human rights lawyer Siranush Sahakyan said in her statement to the Armenian Weekly.
Sahakyan is right. The definition of a POW is clear, concise and not debatable: “A prisoner of war (POW) is a non-combatant — whether a military member, an irregular military fighter, or a civilian — who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict.”
POW as defined by the Geneva Convention: Article 4, Section A, subs.1 &2 states:
1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces. 2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
Article 3, Section 1: In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms … shall in all circumstances be treated humanely…(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) Taking of hostages.
Below is the full statement made by Sahakyan, of which excerpts were included in my article for the Armenian Weekly.
“In response to the Azerbaijani Government’s illegal detention of Armenian captives and resolute delays in their repatriation, our team has initiated proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of the identified Armenian captives and their families. Since February 2021 this initiation has been supported by the Armenian Legal Center for Justice and Human Rights. Special requests have been made to secure the lives of Armenians under the control of Azerbaijani authorities. Currently cases concerning around 250 Armenian captives are pending before this Court. Only 65 captives of the 2020 war were repatriated. Around 75 captives were officially acknowledged by Azerbaijan. However, remaining captives are unaccounted for more than 4 months after the cessation of hostilities. On 9 March 2021, the European Court of Human Rights decided to notify the Committee of Ministers of the Armenian POWs issue, having regard to the Azerbaijani Government’s failure to provide complete and credible information on the captives to the Court or respect the time-limits set by the Court for the submission of information.”
On the recent HRW reports on Armenian POWs Sahakyan wrote:
“Our interviews with the repatriated POWs confirm that Armenian POWs were subjected to torture and other forms of cruel treatment. The abuses of Armenian PoWs are also documented by the HRW. Based on collected firsthand information, HRW concluded on torture of detained Armenian soldiers and willful killings of protected persons. HRW was quite open in raising the responsibility of Azerbaijan for war crimes. Indeed, HRW is one of the outstanding organizations that deeply investigated human rights abuses, humanitarian law issues across the world and comprehensively reports on them. In this perspective, the response from the MFA of Azerbaijan was quite predictable. The MFA again tried to mislead the international community to disguise the crimes of its own political leadership.”
“The statement that anyone detained after the end of conflict cannot be considered as POWs is manipulative and legally baseless. First, for the status of the POWs the decisive component is that they are members of Armenian armed forces, who fell into the power of Azerbaijan (be that during the war or after). Second, Azerbaijan continues to detain those PoWs, who were taken in captivity before the Trilateral Statement from 9 November 2020. Third, among the returned captives are persons, who were captured after the Trilateral Statement (on 10–11 November and mid-December), which comes to prove that by its own practice Azerbaijan confirmed the extension of the status of PoWs to the persons in question. Evidently, Azerbaijan is just making political bargains at the expense of purely humanitarian issues.”
In 2019, Sahakyan co-founded the NGO “Path of Law”, a human rights NGO that registers cases of human rights violations. Since 2008, she has been has been teaching and conducting training on human rights and anti-corruption topics at various institutions, including the School of Advocates, the Justice Academy, YSU, AUA. She is also a member of the Chamber of Advocates and served as the Chair of the Commission on Ethics for High-Ranking Officials. Other work outside of public service include her role as partner at Legalata Law firm, founder and president of the NGO “Protection of Rights without Borders”.
Armenian POWs Are Not Detainees, Their Human Rights Should be Protected Under International Law
The status of Armenian POWs is being changed at the expense of their lives. Will the world continue to sit idly by as Azerbaijan holds more than 200 innocent human beings being deprived of their rightful freedom? Is anyone else going to question why Azerbaijan is refusing to reunite these POWs with their families?
More on Ambassador Tracy here:https://armenianweekly.com/2020/12/01/ambassador-lynne-tracy-gets-f-rating-as-us-ambassador-to-armenia/
