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Azerbaijan systematically promotes ethnic hatred against Armenians, Armenia’s representative before the ECHR, Yeghishe Kirakosyan, told the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, in The Hague on Thursday, asking the court to stop a cycle of violence and hatred against ethnic Armenians.

Armenia filed a case against Azerbaijan at the World Court last month, stating Azerbaijan has violated the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Kirakosyan’s comments came as the court opened a hearing into a request by Armenia for judges to impose urgent interim measures against Azerbaijan to stop the violations. Among the requested measures are an order to release Armenian prisoners of war and other captives being held in Azerbaijan and to close the so-called “military trophies park”.

Kirakosyan stated Armenia was not asking the court to rule on the root causes of the war, but seeks to “prevent and remedy the cycle of violence and hatred perpetrated against ethnic Armenians.”

"Generations upon generations are indoctrinated into this culture of fear and hate of anything and everything Armenian," Kirakosyan said.

Not even the conclusion of the trilateral statement of November 2020 has prevented Azerbaijan from violating the Convention, he stressed.

“Azerbaijan continues to espouse and actively promote ethnic hatred against Armenians. The so-called “military trophies park” has stood as a grotesque monument to this ideology of hate,” Kirakosyan stated.

“Azerbaijan has captured, tortured, and arbitrarily detained numerous members of Armenian armed forces and civilians of ethnic Armenian origin. Azerbaijan, moreover, continues to destroy Armenian cultural heritage and religious sites or negate the Armenian character, and the territory’s economic controls. All those violations were perpetrated and continue to be perpetrated as we speak,” he said.