Western Azerbaijan Community

The Western Azerbaijan Community strongly condemns the program entitled “Armenia’s Struggle for Land and Identity in the Caucasus” aired on March 30 by the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, as it raises serious concerns in terms of gross violation of journalistic standards, dissemination of misinformation, sowing racial discrimination and ethnic hatred.

First of all, the program distorts historical facts, completely ignoring the suffering of the Azerbaijani people, and presents the history of the former conflict in full accordance with the narrative of radical Armenian nationalists.

The program deliberately conceals the facts of the complete ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis from Armenia, the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia, the expulsion of more than 800 thousand Azerbaijanis from their native lands, the destruction of about a thousand Azerbaijani cities and villages, large-scale mining of a significant part of our territory and causing damage amounting to over 150 billion US dollars. It also ignores such important points as the killing of more than 20,000 Azerbaijanis during the conflict, the fact that 4,000 people are still missing, and Armenia’s refusal to ensure the safe and dignified return of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis forcibly expelled from its territory. This is a clear violation of the principles of journalism such as objectivity and truthfulness.

The tone of the program is based on religious fanaticism and demonstrates a biased attitude towards Azerbaijanis. What is especially outrageous is that the footage of Azerbaijani refugees is presented as images of Armenians, which misleads viewers. Such manipulation not only contributes to the spread of disinformation, but also serves as an obstacle to achieving peace between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. We believe that such actions, unfortunately, systematically repeated in a number of European media, are deliberate and their goal is to offend the dignity of the Azerbaijani people.

We recall that earlier, the Franco-German public broadcaster Arte also presented footage of Azerbaijani refugees as images of Armenians.

We, the Western Azerbaijan Community, believe that this Deutsche Welle broadcast not only violates the norms of journalistic ethics, but also harms the efforts to achieve peace and harmony in the region, it is aimed at preventing peace. The demonstration of such a one-sided and distorted approach by an international media structure, while the viewer expects objectivity and responsibility from it, is unacceptable. Deutsche Welle must remove this broadcast from its public resources and apologize to the Azerbaijani people.