YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan condemned the Azerbaijani military for “terrorizing” the peaceful residents of Armenia by installing a “Welcome to Azerbaijan” sign in between border settlements in Syunik, where delimitation and demarcation works are still ongoing.

The sign, featuring a distorted map showing large parts of Syunik as part of Azerbaijan, was installed by the Azeri troops on the road leading from the town of Goris to the village of Vorotan. Azeri flags were also installed near the village of Vorotan.

“The sign was installed on a road linking an Armenian civilian settlement with another one,” Tatoyan said in a statement, adding that the Azeri troops installed the sign to explicitly terrorize and transgress the rights of the peaceful Armenian residents of the border towns.

“This is a totally condemnable step which was done with the explicit intent to terrorize peaceful residents, first of all taking into consideration the tortures, inhumane treatment and other war crimes and ethnic cleansings that the Azerbaijani military committed against our people especially during and after the September-November 2020 war. Such steps are especially condemnable on the background of continuing state-sanctioned and organized propaganda of anti-Armenian sentiment and murder of Armenians in Azerbaijan, as well as the fact that publically known persons who’ve declared themselves human rights defenders in Azerbaijan are explicitly calling for a new war against Armenia,” Tatoyan said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan