As a result of the joint work of Lucas Fourlas, the Cypriot member of the European Parliament, and the European Office of the ARF Armenian Dat, on November 5, the “COP 29 in Baku” was held in the European Parliament. Covering ethnic cleansing” conference, which was attended by members of parliament representing various political groups of the European Parliament, Belgian politicians, diplomats, representatives of civil society, journalists and representatives of the Belgian Armenian community.
The central office of the ARF Bureau of Armenian Dat informs that the opening speech of the conference was given by Lukas Fourlas, the host of the conference, Tigran Balayan, the representative of the Republic of Armenia in the European Union and RA ambassador to Belgium, Gaspar Karapetyan, the president of the European office of the ARF Armenian Dat.
Simon Papuashvili, head of Eastern Europe and South Caucasus programs of “International Cooperation for Human Rights”, Catalina De La Sota, international law specialist, Artsakh journalist Siranuysh Sargsyan and Davit Vardanyan, Ruben Vardanyan’s son, were invited as speakers at the conference.
The purpose of the conference was to focus on various issues related to the holding of COP 29 in Azerbaijan, in particular, what impact its hosting in Baku can have for the purposes of this global conference, in the context of the developments taking place in the region, especially against the background of the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Armenian population of Artsakh.
The conference shed light on the continuous campaign of the Azerbaijani government aimed at forcing the forced displacement of the Armenians of Artsakh, as well as on the violations of human rights and the flagrant attitude of that country towards the environment. In general, the discussions took place within the framework of revitalizing the destructive positions of Azerbaijan in the fields of political, environmental and human rights.
Commenting on the holding of the conference, the president of the European office of ARF Armenian Dat, Gaspar Karapetyan, noted: “The holding of this conference is an important message to the European delegations preparing to participate in COP 29, that environmental rights and security cannot be separated from fundamental human rights and freedoms.” Azerbaijan, with such a state of human rights and war crimes, should not have had the opportunity to host this important event, by which it should try to hide its identity as a genocidal. We once again express our satisfaction to the deputies of the European Parliament, especially to the president of the friendship group with Armenia, Lukas Furlas, for hosting the conference.
On the eve of this conference, the call of 52 members of the European Parliament to Azerbaijan, demanding the release of prisoners, the protection of the cultural heritage of Artsakh and the withdrawal of the occupation armed forces from the territory of Armenia, is the expression of the European Parliament’s clear political position, which was the subject of the earlier adopted resolution. We will continue our outreach work and we are hopeful that the European delegations participating in COP 29 will not focus only on environmental issues and will raise the views of the issues related to Armenians that have been included in the resolutions of the European Parliament and the statements of the EU executive in recent months.