The international human rights organisation Freedom House presented the report "Freedom in the World 2024", which also mentions the military aggression and ethnic cleansing carried out by Azerbaijan in Artsakh.

In the section "Attacks on disputed territories increase global authoritarian aggression", the report states that people living in such territories are often victims of autocracy, hostility to pluralism, and their expansionist agenda.

"People living in disputed territories are often victims of autocrats' hostility to pluralism as well as their expansionist agenda. In September, the Azerbaijani regime's siege of Nagorno-Karabakh led to the dismantling of local state institutions and the forced displacement of more than 120,000 Armenians in what many foreign observers described as ethnic cleansing. As a result, the formerly partially free territory experienced the world's largest downgrade in 2023, losing a total of 40 points.

The attack coincided with deepening authoritarian repression within Azerbaijan. Since the early 1990s, the government has introduced policies that discriminate against ethnic Armenians, and Armenian citizens and their descendants have been banned or restricted from entering the country. Discrimination against religion and repression of independent media and civil society has intensified in recent years. The seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh has increased the domestic popularity of President Ilham Aliyev, who has ruled Azerbaijan since inheriting the post from his father in 2003 and has fuelled fears that the Azerbaijani leadership may launch a full-scale invasion of the Republic of Armenia, whose borders have already been violated.

01 March 2024 / 13:02