YEREVAN. – Numerous Armenian churches, monasteries, cemeteries destroyed, erased, confiscated and appropriated in the 1990s and 2000s in the places from where the indigenous Armenian population has been expelled stand as a stark reminder of the cleavages between the commitments and their implementation. Such situations should not be permitted.
The Foreign Minister of Armenia, Edward Nalbandian, on Wednesday said the abovementioned in his statement at the conference in capital city Yerevan, and entitled: “Preventing and Countering Hate Crimes against Christians and Members of other Religious Groups - Perspectives from the OSCE and beyond.”
“There is no doubt that all those conferences and discussions that I have mentioned and many others to which Armenia has actively contributed are of great importance,” Nalbandian said, in particular. “Their aim is to set up and improve the mechanisms and bring us closer to the implementation of our obligations. In the OSCE alone we have developed a broad range of commitments to combat racism, xenophobia, discrimination, anti-Semitism and intolerance, including against Christians, Jews, Muslims, other religious groups and to prevent and respond to hate crimes. There is a consensus among participating states that adherence to these commitments is crucial for the maintenance of peace, stability and security. Thus, it is high time now to ensure that the OSCE possess effective mechanisms and expertise to assist participating States in taking appropriate action to protect Christians and members of other religions.
“I would like to bring one example in this regard. The Cracow Document endorsed by the 1994 OSCE Budapest Summit stipulates that ‘the participating States will pay due attention to monuments and objects of religious origin whose original communities no longer use them or no longer exist in the particular region.’ Numerous Armenian churches, monasteries, cemeteries destroyed, erased, confiscated and appropriated in the 1990s and 2000s in the places from where the indigenous Armenian population has been expelled stand as a stark reminder of the cleavages between the commitments and their implementation. Such situations should not be permitted.
“Recent international reports draw a quite appalling picture with regard to the religious freedom in the world. According to one of them nearly 80 percent of the humanity lives in places where restrictions on religion are either ‘high’ or ‘very high.’ According to others reports about the deterioration of the situation in this regard, including in some OSCE participating states that are in the immediate neighborhood of Armenia. In these countries the areas of particular concern are the rising numbers of the prisoners of conscience, dissemination of the hatred, especially through the media and education.
“There is a certain tendency in the OSCE area among those participating states whose non-compliance with the OSCE human dimension commitments particularly with respect to the fundamental freedoms is well known, to disguise human rights violations by depicting themselves as islands of tolerance and non-discrimination or even best examples to be followed by others. Portraying themselves multicultural, multireligious in one organization, seeking religious solidarity in other organization and finally nurturing own population by hatred as a substitute to human rights may work only as a short-term propaganda but will certainly undermine stability and security in the region.
“Unfortunately, religious dimension has often been invoked to mobilize support in the conflict situations that have never had anything to do with the faith. Some organizations, which are based on religious solidarity, support these claims potentially exacerbating already complex conflict situations. We believe that the OSCE and first and foremost those participating States that are members of such religion-based organizations should resolutely reject such threatening practices. In reality most of the current destructive conflicts take place not between but within the same religion and this is evident especially on the example of the modern Middle East.”
