Expert warns of increasing dehumanization of Armenians in Azerbaijan

Signs of increasing dehumanization of Armenians in Azerbaijan have become too pronounced to overlook, regional security expert Varuzhan Geghamyan said, warning that international assessments are growing less direct in labeling such actions.

Speaking at a forum on Tuesday, Geghamyan said foreign media, analysts and expert communities are now less likely to explicitly characterize Azerbaijan’s policies as anti-Armenian. “Put simply, there is a growing reluctance to call things by their proper names,” he said.

The expert suggested that the tone of official Armenian statements has contributed to this shift, describing it as overly cautious. He pointed to a recent Armenian Foreign Ministry statement that referred to Armenian prisoners of war as “persons detained in Azerbaijan”, arguing that it reflects an unnecessarily softened approach.

He further contended that developments in Azerbaijan since the 2020 Artsakh war can be “precisely situated within the framework of genocidal processes or actions facilitating them,” from an academic standpoint.

Rejecting assertions from Baku that hostility toward Armenians has diminished following what Azerbaijani officials describe as the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Geghamyan said the opposite trend is evident. Azerbaijan, he argued, has not only sustained but intensified policies marked by anti-Armenian rhetoric and militarization.

“Manifestations of dehumanization against Armenians in Azerbaijan are impossible to ignore,” he said, adding that their scale has expanded in recent years. He noted that these patterns have been documented in multiple human rights reports and by genocide scholars.