“If an Azerbaijani or a Turk falls into his hands, he will tear them to pieces”

“Imagine a member of an Armenian family whose child’s head, hand, or ear has been cut off: if he gets hold of an Azerbaijani or a Turk, he will cut him to pieces,” Moscow-based human rights advocate Arbak Khachatryan said in a conversation with Aravot about the war that began on the Karabakh-Azerbaijan border during the night of April 1–2 and lasted four days.

In his view, those four days significantly changed the subsequent process of peaceful settlement. He believes that, until then, young Armenians and Azerbaijanis should have been working together and developing economic ties, while future generations would have resolved the remaining issues over time. But now it is difficult to imagine prospects for cooperation.

Our interlocutor also regards Serzh Sargsyan’s statement in Germany that our army was fighting mainly with weapons from the 1980s as a diplomatic “trick”: “But that is not the issue. A couple of tanks or aircraft do not decide it; the state must be strong.” Read

Aravot daily newspaper, April 20, 2016