Ilham Aliyev reminds CIS of glorification of Garegin Nzhdeh in Armenia

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, speaking at the session of the Council of CIS Heads of State in Ashgabat, reminded of glorification of Nazi collaborator Garegin Nzhdeh in Armenia.

Ilham Aliyev, speaking of appeal to the peoples of the CIS countries and the world community about the inadmissibility of attempts to revise the history and glorification of Nazism, which is expected to be approved at the summit, stressed that the CIS heads of state have repeatedly opposed glorification of Nazism.

"Unfortunately, this is happening in the CIS, in particular in Armenia, where the former authorities erected a monument to the fascist executioner and traitor Garegin Ter-Harutyunyan in the center of Yerevan, who served with the German fascists under the Garegin Nzhdeh nickname," the head of state noted.

"A large group of war veterans from the CIS countries have repeatedly expressed strong protest against this cynical step of the previous Armenian leadership. In May 2019, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented a report 'On the situation with the glorification of Nazism, the spread of neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to the escalation of modern forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance', which says literally: "the former ruling Republican party of Armenia took steps to memorize Garegin Nzhdeh, a controversial nationalist politician, who was reportedly involved in cooperation with the Third Reich." This is the position of the Russian Foreign Ministry," the President of Azerbaijan emphasized.

Ilham Aliyev recalled that subsequently Nzhdeh was arrested by the Soviet authorities, he died in the Vladimir prison. "Unfortunately, the new government of Armenia did not dismantle this monument. I believe that there is no place for the glorification of fascism in the CIS," the Azerbaijani leader concluded.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, speaking next, tried to justify Nazi accomplice Garegin Nzhdeh. By tradition, he made an attempt to present Ilham Aliyev's words as his personal opinion, as a "subjective interpretation", although the President of Azerbaijan voiced the historical facts and provisions of official documents. Then Pashinyan accuse Baku of excessive attention to Armenia in order to divert the attention of the CIS heads of state from the fact that indeed, Yerevan has the only monument to the Nazi accomplice in the CIS.

In addition, the Armenian PM described the statement of glorification of Nazi accomplice Garegin Nzhdeh as a form of disrespect for the Armenian people, trying to hide the general understanding that such Yerevan's actions is a form of disrespect for the common history of the peoples of the former USSR. "And I consider this disrespectful to the heads of state and the people they represent here," Pashinyan said about Ilham Aliyev's speech, although should have said it about his own support for the nationalist policies of his predecessors.

It should be noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry's report cited by Ilham Aliyev, in fact, gave the new Armenian authorities a chance to abandon the criminal historical policy of the instigators of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the leaders of the 'Karabakh clan' and the Republican Party of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan and Robert Kocharian, since the RPA continued to glorify Garegin Nzhdeh. However, in reality, Nikol Pashinyan's  "revolutionary" team turned out to be the ideological heir of the old nationalists.

A typical example is the presentation of Nzhdeh as a hero of the Great Patriotic War at the May parade in Yerevan this year. Formally, the power in Armenia has changed, but in reality it has remained the same. And it's fine for Yerevan that by signing documents on the inadmissibility of attempts to revise the history and glorification of Nazism, they legally condemn themselves every time for glorification of Nazi accomplice Garegin Nzhdeh.