Human rights violations are always abhorrent.

But there's something very disingenuous about @HRW equating the actions of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Nothing compares to the scale and severity of Azerbaijan's deliberate targeting of civilian populations. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/11/azerbaijan-unlawful-strikes-nagorno-karabakh#

The report identifies 11 cases of "apparent indiscriminate attacks" by Armenia, but acknowledges that "Azerbaijan unnecessarily put civilians at risk by locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas & failing to remove civilians." https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/11/armenia-unlawful-rocket-missile-strikes-azerbaijan#

Armenia was striking legitimate military targets to end the shelling of civilian areas. Azerbaijan deliberately & unnecessarily put civilians at extreme risk. The loss of life is tragic, but only Azerbaijan bears responsibility for the death of civilians it used as human shields.

Its report on Azerbaijan's constant bombardment of Stepanakert & civilian areas continues to use language such as "apparent" & "alleged" - casting aspersions over the veracity of the claims.

It also doesn't address Azerbaijan's intent - to ethnically cleanse the region.

The Armenia report cites an Azeri govt official who claimed Armenia's actions "displaced" 40,000 people - but in its report on Azerbaijan's attacks, it states 50,000 residents "fled" Stepanakert.

Terminology matters. HRW is downplaying Azerbaijan's ethnic cleansing.

It may seem like a cynical thing to say, but there is a qualitative difference between fleeing violence and forced displacement.

But these reports don't pick up on that because they choose to ignore things like intent, motivation, and institutionalized anti-Armenian racism.

If this report seriously examined the genocidal motivations of Azerbaijan (you only need to look at the praise of Enver Pasha at yesterday's rally to see that) - they would see Azerbaijan's actions were intended to erase any Armenian presence from the region.

It seems like an obvious point to make, but an aggressor's attacks on civilian populations during a war in which the stated military objective is territorial conquest is fundamentally different from actions taken by a besieged population out of self-defense.

As with @Amnesty's report, there is zero nuance in this approach to monitoring & reporting on human rights abuses.

It falsely equates the two sides by holding both to the same standard of accountability that does not take into account scope, scale, severity or intent.