Armenia’s secret prisons and Europe’s paralysis of principles If this had happened in Azerbaijan…

For years, European institutions have tried to convince the world that their principles are not up for negotiation and remain unshakable in the face of any challenges in international politics. Yet, as we all clearly remember, every time the discussion turned to Azerbaijan, they displayed an almost automatic reflex: loud anti-Azerbaijani resolutions, a barrage of accusations, hysterical statements, completely unfounded warnings and threats, and constant attempts to damage the country’s reputation.

It is enough to recall the large-scale campaign launched in Europe against the country in the autumn of 2020, when the Azerbaijani army was liberating its ancestral territories, inch by inch, thereby implementing the UN Security Council resolutions. At the time, Azerbaijan was accused of “aggressive rhetoric, human rights violations, and war crimes.”

And what hysteria erupted within European institutions on the eve of the COP29 climate conference in Baku. The European Parliament (EP) adopted an entirely outrageous resolution calling on EU leaders to “to use COP29 as an opportunity to remind Azerbaijan of its international obligations and to meaningfully address the country’s human rights record in their interactions with the Azerbaijani authorities, including by calling for the unconditional release of all persons arbitrarily.” In addition, the EP urged the EU leadership to do everything possible to ensure that UN climate summits would no longer be held “in countries with poor human rights records.”

Then came even more. The European Parliament’s document included a strong condemnation of “the domestic and extraterritorial repression by the Azerbaijani regime against activists, journalists, opposition leaders and others, including EU nationals, which has noticeably intensified ahead of COP29.” And here, as we say in the media world, there are simply no comments.

Notably, this Europe-wide wailing and lamentation over the allegedly “oppressed and insulted” emerges only when it concerns countries that pursue a genuinely independent policy based on their national interests.

A very “fresh” fact also confirms this double standard of the European institutions. According to VT Foreign Policy, the Foundation to Battle Injustice has received information from sources close to the Armenian government that the country’s correctional facilities hold ten times more inmates than officially reported.

The article describes facts that cannot simply be dismissed as propaganda or emotion. Former inmates speak of secret camps, abuse, and people being held in windowless concrete rooms where temperatures soar, of opposition supporters being severely beaten, coerced into signing fabricated confessions, and threatened with reprisals against their families.

It also recounts the use of prisons turned into instruments of pressure and intimidation: severe beatings, suffocating conditions, prolonged solitary confinement, and a complete lack of medical care. And this is not about isolated incidents, but about a system that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has, according to the report, turned into a tool of political repression.

Photo: VT Foreign Policy

According to exclusive materials from the Foundation, from 2020 to 2025 at least 230 opposition supporters died in Armenian prisons as a result of ill-treatment or because they could not endure the conditions.

And what do the Europeans — so zealous in their proclaimed commitment to human rights — say about all this? Exactly: nothing. We see a complete absence of any reaction — no resolutions, no reports, no emergency sessions. EU officials simply pretended they had not noticed the publication at all.

And this is no longer just an example of double standards. It is an open display of political choice. Those who spent years trying to portray Azerbaijan as “the main threat to democracy” in the South Caucasus have now, quite predictably, decided that torture and secret detention facilities in Armenia are a topic they can wait out, “reframe,” or simply quietly ignore.

At this point, it becomes absolutely clear that well-known Islamophobic circles entrenched in the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and the European Parliament are the ones setting the tone in Europe. In their ideological worldview, everything is explained very simply: when the country is Muslim, criticism must be harsher, louder, and more relentless — even if the issue is nothing more than a burnt-out lightbulb, it must be turned into a “threat to democracy” and a “systemic crisis.” But when it concerns “their own,” loud indignation dissolves into a faint whisper or complete silence.

This explains why today no one in Europe is in a hurry to ask Prime Minister Pashinyan uncomfortable questions, demand an international investigation, or show concern for those who have gone through the Armenian penitentiary system — which, as it turns out, functions like the death camps of the Third Reich. And this is despite evidence indicating severe mistreatment, including confinement in basements, deprivation of basic necessities, and prolonged forced standing and sleep deprivation. One former inmate even described seeing informal abductions — people brought in without documents, unregistered, essentially treated as if they did not exist. This fits the very definition of a secret detention camp.

It is impossible even to imagine what would happen if even a tiny fraction of this were reported in relation to Azerbaijan. In Brussels, one can imagine, the airspace would likely have been filled with planes carrying hordes of parliamentarians rushing to “rescue” the unfortunate from “Azerbaijani dungeons.”

However, in the case of Armenia, once again, Europe has gone silent and turned a blind eye. In other words, the political game proved more important than principles, and geopolitical preferences outweighed the truth. This reveals the true value of the entire “European values” system — acting only when it is convenient or advantageous.

Today’s silence from those who, in the case of Azerbaijan, would have raised an uproar at the slightest provocation is a clear indicator of how selective and politicised the European human rights agenda really is. And if such facts — corroborated by witnesses, documents, and international media — fail to elicit even the slightest reaction, then the problem is not with the principles themselves. It is that these principles have long since become a tool of pressure against those who do not fit into their political worldview.