Armenophobia has been vigorously cultivated in Azerbaijan in the past 30 years. It was not taken seriously, nor was much attention paid to it in Armenia or anywhere else. While its roots go back over a century, it is sufficient to remember its effects in the pogroms of the Armenians in Azerbaijan of the late Eighties and early Nineties. The state-sponsored Armenophobia, following Azerbaijan’s loss of the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994, became a key instrument to propagate hate within Azerbaijani society. Filling a society with hate provides the perfect milieu to implement war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity that was carried out during the 2020 Azerbaijani invasion of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). In May 2021 the Human Rights Defender of Armenia “completed the analysis of 297 videos and photos of the Azerbaijani atrocities against the Armenian servicemen and civilians” revealing torture, humiliation, beheadings, murder, use of chemical weapons, vandalism of Armenian cultural heritage, the dissemination of hatred on social media and the participation of mercenaries in the war. But it does not end there: an Azerbaijani society afflicted with Armenophobia is cheering the recent incursion of 500 Azerbaijani forces into Armenian territory. This, too, is a testament to the genocidal intentions of Azerbaijan towards Armenians…
By Arus Karapetyan, KEGHART
