Statement

The European Ombudsman Institute condemns any violation of human rights regarding  civilians and attacks on civilian objects in Nagorno-Karabakh.

 We are concerned by the information that civilian citizens of Nagorno-Karabakh were inhumanly treated without any respect and by that offended in their dignity.

 Many people had allegedly to leave their homes, because of specific danger to their life, secondary schools and kindergartens, and the civilian life had to stop.

 Even ambulances transferring injured persons to hospitals had been targeted. We are concerned by the information received, that peaceful civilians were killed in the Nagorno-Karabakh settlements through partly cruel and inhuman methods of execution.

These methods of treatment of human beings are strictly prohibited according to all human rights standards.

All these operations constitute gross violations of human rights; they are opposed to European human rights and human values; they significantly endanger the European system for the protection and promotion of human rights.

 It goes without saying, that the protection of civilians, above all of children and elderly persons against these brutal operations, and the protection of secondary schools, kindergartens and other civilian objects are in the center of international and European human rights standards.

 Human rights are strongly protected by the legal norms of international humanitarian law.

European Ombudsman Institute – EOI

 Innsbruck, 11.04.2016