Nice Mayor Eric Ciotti has announced plans to propose granting honorary citizenship to 20 Armenian hostages illegally held in Azerbaijan, demanding their immediate and unconditional release.
The announcement came during an October 22 ceremony at Nice City Hall, attended by members of the local Armenian community and French historian Jean-Christophe Buisson.
Portraits of the 20 hostages, including former Artsakh political and military leaders, were displayed outside City Hall alongside ribbons in the colors of the Armenian flag.
Ciotti condemned Azerbaijan’s continued imprisonment of the captives, accusing the Azerbaijani regime of attempting to erase them from public memory. He pledged that Nice would continue advocating for their freedom.
The ceremony also drew attention to Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military attack on Artsakh, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of more than 100,000 Armenians from their ancestral homeland.
Recalling that Nice had welcomed survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, Ciotti reaffirmed the city’s historical ties to the Armenian people, declaring: “Nice knows your faces, your names. Nice does not forget you.”
The proposed honorary citizenship would serve as a symbolic recognition of the hostages and a public expression of the city’s demand for their release. The measure has not yet been formally adopted.
Earlier, on October 3, Ciotti joined 24 other French political figures in signing an appeal demanding the immediate and unconditional release of Armenian hostages held by Azerbaijan.
