Azerbaijan, 10 OSCE member states call for Nazi glorification ban

By Vafa Ismayilova 

Azerbaijan and 10 OSCE member states have called for the preservation of military burial sites and memorials honoring those killed fighting the Nazis during World War II and not allowing for the glorification of Nazism, Russian media has reported.

This joint statement was made on May 7 by permanent representatives of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan at the OSCE on the occasion of the 76th anniversary of Victory in World War II.

"We urge to carefully preserve the military burial sites, the memorials, monuments and grave markers honoring those who were killed fighting against Nazism and Fascism. There is no excuse for vandalism of such memorial objects," the statement said.

It described as sacred duty to guard and firmly stand up for the historic truth about those events preserved in the memory of the aforesaid peoples and in the archival documents.

"Falsification of history of the Second World War, its causes and results, is an insult to the memory of those who fought against Nazism and its victims which facilitates manipulations and erodes the foundations of modern international relations," it continued.

The representatives of 11 countries stated that it was inadmissible to glorify the Nazi movement, neo-Nazism and former members of the Waffen-SS organization, including erecting monuments and memorials, holding public rallies in order to praise the Nazi past, declaring that those who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition were participants of national liberation movements or renaming streets in order to glorify them.

"We confirm our adherence to the idea of a free, democratic, common and indivisible Eurasian and Euro-Atlantic security community. We support a comprehensive dialogue on the basis of equality and mutual respect in order to fortify the system of international security and trust," the representatives of 11 OSCE member states concluded.

It should be recalled that Azerbaijani veterans on May 7 turned to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asking him to help demolish a monument to Nazi accomplice and ultranationalist Armenian ideologist Garegin Nzhdeh in Azerbaijan's Khojavand city in Karabakh.

In an appeal to Lavrov, the Presidium of the Organization of War, Labor and Armed Forces Veterans of Azerbaijan said that "it’s extremely important to demolish" the monument to Nzhdeh located in the Azerbaijani city of Khojavand, once occupied by Armenia and currently in the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeepers.

“The presence of such a monument on the territory of Azerbaijan is unacceptable and unacceptable not only from the point of view of the values ??of our state and people, but also taking into account universal and moral values,” the appeal said.

Earlier, Azerbaijan repeatedly stated the heroization of fascism should have no place in the CIS, pointing to  monuments erected to fascist Garegin Nzhdeh in Armenia and in Azerbaijan's formerly Armenian-occupied territories.