Life Site News: USCIRF made a blunder: Azerbaijan, which committed religious genocide right in the open, has got away with it
A few days ago, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released this year’s report, where Azerbaijan went from a Country of Particular Concern to the Special Watch List. This change is an international scandal as Azerbaijan has engaged in—and has effectively succeeded in—cleansing the region of Christians since 2023, Life Site News writes.
“By any objective measure, Azerbaijan committed religious genocide right in the open. Worse, it got away with it,” the website writes.
As noted, with firepower acquired from foreign governments, it brazenly swept aside more than 100,000 Christians who had deep ties to the land. “It was right and just for the USCIRF to place it on its list of Countries of Particular Concern,” the website writes, adding that USCIRF also failed to mention that Israel had funded Azerbaijan’s war against Armenian Christians.
The report published by USCIRF stated that Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) provided satellite documentation of endangered religious sites in and around the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In June, CHW reported on the destruction of Armenian religious sites, including a 19th-century church, two cemeteries, and other artifacts. Freedom House also found that Azerbaijan implemented “a comprehensive, methodical strategy to empty Nagorno-Karabakh of its ethnic Armenian population and historical and cultural presence” during the 2020 and 2023 military operations and concluded that Azerbaijan’s actions amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was reported that some Armenian POWs were subjected to religious ill-treatment, including insults, confiscation, and destruction of religious property.
European governing and human rights bodies have repeatedly expressed concern about Azerbaijan’s human rights record, including incidents related to religious freedom. In January, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) refused to approve the credentials of the Azerbaijani delegation, in part because of human rights violations by the Azerbaijani government related to prisoners of conscience and the military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. In the same month, PACE adopted a resolution condemning Azerbaijan’s systematic and widespread use of torture and other forms of ill-treatment. Furthermore, the Council of Europe, the U.N. Committee against Torture, the US policymaking EuroKey foreign policy service, and the European Parliament have condemned Azerbaijan’s systematic destruction of Armenian religious and cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh and its repression of civil society.
It was noted that in 2024, more than 40 members of Congress appealed to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging him to raise the issue of that country’s destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh during every meeting with Azerbaijani officials.
