French politicians call for boycotting COP29 in Azerbaijan and demanding release of Armenian hostages

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 8, ARMENPRESS. Nearly 30 French politicians have called on the French government to boycott the upcoming COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

“Described as a disgrace by many elected representatives sitting on all benches of Parliament, the holding of this conference must not serve to endorse the autocratic, polluting and corrupting regime of Azerbaijan , nor encourage its expansionist and destabilizing aims,” around thirty political figures from all sides, including MP Laurent Wauquiez and Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, said in a collective column published in Le Figaro.

The article is titled "The government must boycott COP29 in Azerbaijan and demand the immediate release of Armenian hostages.”

“However, as this internationally gratifying ecological deadline approaches, the authorities of this State continue to harden their tone, both towards their internal opposition, and towards neighboring Armenia, which is facing a resurgence of threats to its integrity. This is evidenced by the reports of the NGOs Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now, which denounced, on October 8, the efforts of the authorities to "decimate civil society". This is also evidenced by the attitude of Ilham Aliyev, who after having flouted one by one all the terms of the ceasefire agreement of November 9, 2020 and having perpetrated  ethnic cleansing against Nagorno-Karabakh  in September 2023, is constantly raising his level of demands for the signing of a peace. Thus, the prestigious nature of this event produces the opposite of the desired effect. Far from bringing the Azerbaijani authorities to better feelings, COP29 seems on the contrary to radicalize them, in all their excesses. In this context, the signatories of this appeal are surprised by the decision of the French government to have mandated  Agnès Pannier-Runacher , Minister of Ecological Transition, to represent it in Baku. Especially since two French citizens are arbitrarily detained in this country and the [French Foreign Ministry] launched an alert on its website on December 4 to advise French nationals not to travel to Azerbaijan.

“This decision to be represented at this COP29 is all the more questionable since the NGO Human Rights Watch revealed on October 10 that the agreement  between the Azerbaijani government  and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed in August 2024, was " full of significant gaps and ambiguities " aimed at imposing on participants " respect for Azerbaijani laws " and non-interference in the country's " internal affairs ". This will force them to observe a complicit silence on the abuses of this State, which is behind in all rankings of NGOs involved in the protection of human rights.

“Is it possible to talk seriously about ecology while remaining deaf to the calls of all the political prisoners arbitrarily detained and tortured (including the philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan and 22 other Armenian hostages) a few hundred meters from the conference venue? The signatories of this appeal do not believe it. On the contrary, they invite the government to send a strong signal to the Aliev regime by boycotting COP29 and leading an international campaign to demand the immediate and unconditional release of the Armenian hostages, the right to safe return of the  120,000 refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh , in application of an ICJ decision, and respect for the territorial integrity of Armenia, of which it militarily occupies more than 200 km² to date,” reads the article.