Nagorno Karabakh -=- ARTSAKH

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Armenpress.am

 

Politics15:15, 16 October 2024

Swiss legislators call for international peace forum on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

Read the article in: العربيةՀայերենРусский

 

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 16, ARMENPRESS. Swiss legislators have introduced a motion calling for an international peace forum on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to be organized by the Federal Council of Switzerland.

“The aim is to facilitate an open dialogue between Azerbaijan and representatives of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, conducted under international supervision or in the presence of internationally relevant actors, in order to negotiate the safe and collective return of the historically resident Armenian population,” reads the text of the motion submitted to the Swiss parliament by the foreign affairs commission of the National Council. 

The motion’s justification mentions that Nagorno-Karabakh has been emptied of its Armenian population since Azerbaijan’s last military advance in September 2023. 

“Fearing another genocide like that perpetrated against the Armenians in 1915, the historical population was forced to leave their homeland within a few days. The region has since experienced documented ethnic cleansing: Armenian cultural heritage, such as churches, monasteries and cemeteries, is systematically destroyed or reinterpreted with fake historical documents under the guise of "renovation". Despite these serious developments, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh maintain their desire to return to their homeland under security guarantees from the international community, to determine their own political future and to exercise democratic self-government.

“The international community has repeatedly taken a stand. On 17 November 2023, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Azerbaijan is obliged to ensure the "safe, unhindered and expeditious return" of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh and to prevent future displacement by force or intimidation (see ICJ, Doc. No. 180-20231117-ORD-01-00-EN). The European Parliament adopted a resolution on 12 March 2024 calling on Azerbaijan to engage in a comprehensive and transparent dialogue with the Armenians of Karabakh. The aim is to respect their rights, guarantee their security and enable them to return to their homes under international presence (see Joint motion for a resolution RC-B9-0163/2024, para. 14).

“The OSCE Minsk Group, which has been responsible for mediation to date, is severely limited in its ability to act due to geopolitical tensions. This underlines the need for a new negotiation format to resolve the conflict peacefully and protect the rights of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Switzerland has successfully acted as a neutral mediator in international conflicts on several occasions in the past. Most recently, the Federal Council hosted a peace conference on Ukraine on the Bürgenstock in June 2024. Switzerland has also already provided valuable services with regard to Armenia: in October 2009, the "Zurich Protocols" were signed between Armenia and Turkey under Swiss mediation, which aimed to normalize bilateral relations. Federal Councilor Micheline Calmy-Rey was even awarded Armenia's Medal of Honor for her commitment.

“Given the close cooperation between Switzerland and Azerbaijan in the field of energy policy, it is in the economic interest of the Swiss Confederation to promote a lasting and stable peace in the region. This includes in particular the restoration of the basic rights of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. An international peace forum organized by Switzerland could make a decisive contribution to resolving the conflict, enable the return of the displaced persons and thus contribute to the stabilization of the entire region.

“Switzerland has a unique opportunity to use its proven role as a neutral mediator to initiate a constructive dialogue between the conflicting parties. Such an engagement would not only continue Switzerland's humanitarian tradition, but would also strengthen its position as a reliable partner in international diplomacy,” says the text of the motion.

The motion will have to pass a vote.

 

 

 

Published by Armenpress, original at https://armenpress.am/en/article/1202426?fbclid=IwY2xjawF9fe1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHY2QBIBU1W5gIGMIZ_fHO8BTNpR5R5w_Im1inoHcYhnb58li1dddTsK63Q_aem_lRYV73IDfwkI7g6uSpQiYg

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Azatutyun.am

 

Russian Claim On Return Of Karabakh Armenians Dismissed In Yerevan

Հոկտեմբեր 17, 2024

• Astghik Bedevian

 

Ethnic Armenian flee Karabakh for Armenia sitting in a truck at the Lachin checkpoint controlled by Russian peackeepers and Azeri border guards, 26 September 2023.

 

Armenian pro-government and opposition politicians and a representative of Nagorno-Karabakh’s exiled leadership on Thursday shrugged off Russia’s claim that the Karabakh Armenians can safely return to their homeland recaptured by Azerbaijan one year ago.

At a news briefing on Wednesday, Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, spoke of “Baku’s constructive steps aimed at enabling the population that left their native places to return there.”

“An opportunity to return was and is there. If, as you say, people are interested in preserving their homes, their native places, then perhaps they should take advantage of it,” she said, answering a question from an Armenian journalist.

Metakse Hakobian, a Karabakh parliamentarian who also fled the region along with its more than 100,000 residents right after Azerbaijan’s September 2023 offensive, deplored Zakharova’s comments.

“Of course, every Artsakh Armenian dreams about returning to Artsakh,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “But there is one important condition: that cannot happen in the presence or even in the vicinity of the Azerbaijanis.”

A board displaying a Russian state flag and an image of President Vladimir Putin is seen in Stepanakert, October 2, 2023.

Tigran Abrahamian, an opposition member of Armenia’s parliament, was also bemused by the Russian official’s claims. He said that “clear security mechanisms” must be put in place for the Karabakh Armenians “so that their repatriation does not lead to another genocide in the future.”

Lilit Minasian, Abrahamian’s colleague representing the ruling Civil Contract party, likewise said: “We interact with our Karabakh compatriots and they themselves say that now that the whole territory is under Azerbaijani control they cannot go back for security reasons.”

Minasian hit at out at some 2,000 Russian peacekeepers who were deployed in Karabakh following the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war. The Armenian government has condemned their failure to prevent or stop the assault that restored Baku’s full control over Karabakh and forced the region’s practically entire population to take refuge in Armenia.

 

Residents use vehicles to leave Stepanakert following a military operation conducted by Azerbaijani armed forces in Nagorno-Karabakh, September 24, 2023.

President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have rejected the criticism. They have said that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian himself paved the way for Azerbaijan’s recapture of Karabakh by recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over the territory.

Pashinian’s policy has also been denounced by his domestic political opponents as well as Karabakh leaders. Abrahamian complained on Thursday that Yerevan does not assert the Karabakh Armenians’ right to safely return to their homes in ongoing peace talks with Baku.

Zakharova had stated in February that Moscow is now discussing with Baku the possibility of such repatriation. Gegham Stepanian, Karabakh’s human rights ombudsman, countered at the time that the refugees will not go back even if the Russians offer them additional security guarantees. The Russian troops completed their withdrawal from Karabakh four months later.

Even before their exodus, Karabakh’s leaders and ordinary residents made clear that they would not live under Azerbaijani rule.

 

 

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/33162751.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawF-yChleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHTaVTAYGNeUdYeA6gH-VVZ0eIamHDULzhu4xdcZxYpMp8eGlCYGXtowPxA_aem_N0bUCkoTK46SHOIpj4vgvA

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France 24

Nov 7 2024

 

 

How Azerbaijan is erasing traces of the ancient Armenian presence in Nagorno-Karabakh

Just over a year ago in September 2023, Azerbaijan took back control of the secessionist province Nagorno-Karabakh, home to a large Armenian community for centuries. Since then, Azerbaijan's government has been giving the newly captured territory a makeover by destroying buildings and other signs of the historic Armenian presence there. 

By:Guillaume Maurice

 

Nagorno-Karabakh is a much-contested region in Azerbaijan that was historically home to many ethnic Armenians. In 1994, the Armenians there broke away from Azerbaijan and renamed their enclave the Republic of Artsakh. However, just over a year ago – on September 19, 2023 – the Azerbaijani government launched an offensive, and defeated the ethnic Armenian forces after 48 hours of fighting. The young republic was dissolved just 30 years after it was created. In the aftermath, around 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled the region that they have called home for centuries. 

Since then, Azerbaijan has taken control of Nagorno-Karabakh and seems to want to leave a lasting mark. “Great Return” is a plan by Azerbaijan's government plan to resettle ethnic Azeris in the area. Many Azeris fled Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 when fighting broke out in the Second Nagorno-Kazarbakh War. 

Stepanakert, the front line of Azerbaijani resettlement 

When Azerbaijan took over the city of Stepanakert in September 2023, they started calling it Khankendi. But that’s not the only thing they’ve changed about this city, which was once the capital of the Armenian enclave of Artsakh. The Azeri authorities have also been transforming its architecture. 

In the past year, a number of buildings on the main square have been replaced. The building that housed Artsakh’s parliament, for example, has been bulldozed, as shown in this video.

In a satellite image from Google Earth taken in April 2024, the building is still there but seems to be under construction. 

The building that housed the parliament of the self-declared ethnic Armenian Republic of Artsakh is visible in this satellite image taken on April 5, 2024. There is scaffolding on the building, which makes it seem like construction is under way. © GoogleEarthPro

Satellite images show that the building was totally demolished by September 2024.This was also reported by Azerbaijan state television. 

The image on the left, taken on August 12, 2023, shows the Artsakh parliament. The image on the right, taken on September 9, 2024, shows that the building has been destroyed. © MaxarTechnologies

Other buildings on Renaissance Square were also destroyed. For example, the building that housed the Artsakh Freedom Fighters Union, which was right next to the parliament building, is also missing from these recent satellite images. According to the investigation carried out by FranceInfo’s Révélateurs team, the former parliamentary building will be replaced by a “luxury hotel and conference centre”. 

The buildings are both gone in satellite images taken in September 2024. 

The building housing the Artsakh veteran’s union appears in the image captured on August 12, 2023 (at left). In the image captured on September 9, 2024, you can see that the building has been razed. © GoogleEarthPro

Roads destroyed in the capital 

It’s not just buildings in Stepanakert that have been destroyed – whole streets have also been demolished. One TikTok user, armanava1998, has been trying to document the destruction that has taken place since the arrival of the Azerbaijani military. His identity is a bit of a mystery. In his profile picture, he poses with the Artsakh flag, yet his photos indicate that he has remained in Stepanakert/Khankendi since it fell. We reached out to him but he didn’t respond to our interview requests. 

Some of the photos and videos shared by Armanava1998 show streets totally destroyed. 

Our team was able to geolocalise this video. The photos were taken from a restaurant called Florence Garden, located on the corner between Renaissance Square and Tumanyan Street. In the video, you can see the distinctive railing on the balcony as well as the streetlights and flower pots that line Tumanyan Street. All of these appear on the Instagram posts from Florence Garden’s account.

The video filmed by armanava1998 shows a street that has been completely demolished. While one part of the video shows construction under way in Renaissance Square, the other part shows destroyed homes.

Using this video, we marked the homes on Tumanyan Street on this map. 

From satellite images provided by Sentinel, we were able to confirm that this destruction began on September 14, 2023. 

'They want to deny us of the hope of returning' 

Nona Bogosian is a former resident of Stepanakert. She fled when the Azeri forces arrived in September 2023. She believes the new administration is systematically destroying these homes:

 

Tumanyan Street is parallel to the street where our home was located. These traditional Armenian homes, built at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries, no longer exist. It was one of the most colourful streets in Stepanakert.  

On Aliyev’s orders [Editor’s note: Ilham Aliyev is the president of Azerbaijan], everything that looks like Armenian architecture is being destroyed, including this street. I think in doing that, they only had one goal, to deny us the hope of returning. They started with the oldest houses, built in the traditional style of the time. 

An Azeri resettlement policy centred on business

When the Armenian population fled, many shops in Stepanakert closed. Soon, Azeri-owned businesses began to open in the town newly christened Khankendi. 

For example, the Azerbaijani supermarket chain OBA has moved in. Photos of the store’s grand opening were shared on the X account of Khankendi’s new city government. 

Before the Azeri chain OBA opened their shop, 52 Tumanyan Street was occupied by Gurman Market, a Russian supermarket chain, as you can see in this Facebook post.

Sports on the frontlines of the Azeri cultural rebranding of Nagorno-Karabakh

Sports have also played a role in Azerbaijan's makeover of Nagorno-Karabakh. For example, the city's stadium was entirely repainted and reopened with a lot of pomp and circumstance. 

The return to Nagorno-Karabakh on Dec. 21, 2023 of FK Qarabağ, an Azeri-dominated club from the region that moved to the capital Baku in the 1990s, marked an important symbolic moment for Azerbaijan's reconquest of the enclave. President Aliyev himself attended the match. 

Ahead of the game, the stadium was repainted. And during the game, people in the crowd brandished Azerbaijani flags. 

Religious symbols destroyed 

But the cultural warfare doesn’t end with architecture: religion is also a big part of Azerbaijan's campaign in the region. One of the most controversial changes involved a cross in the village of Dashushen, located to the south of Stepanakert. 

The cross was destroyed in November 2023, sparking outrage in Armenia. Our team was able to confirm using satellite images that the cross had indeed been destroyed. 

In this satellite image captured August 12, 2023 by the Maxar company, you can see the cross is still standing. © 2023 Maxar Technologies

In a satellite image taken on December 20, 2023, you can see that the cross has been destroyed.

Most ethnic Armenians are Christian and most ethnic Azeris are Muslim. However, religion isn’t really at the centre of this conflict, says Elodie Gavrilof, a specialist in the Caucasus region and researcher at Paris's EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) university and at the French Institute for Anatolian Studies:

"While there is a religious dimension to this conflict, it is secondary. What is central is the nationalist identity - and religion is just one part of that. 

If Azeris destroy Armenian churches, it is because the churches are Armenian, not because they are Christian. I think that the West has imported this idea that it is a religious conflict, especially the extreme right."

An Azeri narrative centred on 'return'

The Azerbaijani government has prioritised moving ethnic Azeri families into Nagorno-Karabakh, many of whom say they were pushed out of the area by ethnic Armenians. This policy began at the end of the war in 2020.  

Part of this resettlement program has been the construction of new villages for Azeri families moving into the area. Azerbaijan recaptured Aghali, a village in the  Zanguilan district, in 2020. Since then, it has been completely rebuilt as a “smart city” with an emphasis on sustainability and new technology. The development had financial support from the World Bank. 

Élodie Gavrilof says that that Azerbaijan's government has put the environment at the centre of their resettlement policy – for strategic reasons :

Azerbaijan's President Aliyev wants to show off Nagorno-Karabakh. This dynamic will be reinforced during COP29 [Editor’s note: The UN Climate Conference will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan later this month]. Essentially, the Azerbaijani government is trying to make the environment their main argument for resettling Nagorno-Karabakh. It’s savvy, because no one can stand against saving the planet. 

Back in April 2023, the Azeri government used fake environmental activists to block off the Lachin corridor, which was being used to supply the Armenian enclave. These so-called activists claimed that the Armenians didn’t treat the environment well. 

The Azerbaijan government has been installing a lot of solar panels in Nagorno-Karabakh. Aliyev wants to make Karabakh the greenest region in Azerbaijan in an attempt to obscure the war crimes.”

Gavrilof believes that the resettlement of ethnic Azeris isn’t actually the most impactful thing that the government is doing. 

What really counts is the political narrative. Resettling people isn’t the most important part. Because as long as it is ongoing, it remains a political argument for Aliyev: it can be an instrument of propaganda for the ruling party.  

Yes, Azerbaijan has relocated people. But it is largely just surface level. Some people don’t want to go back. And, in any case, for the towns that were exclusively Armenian, settling Azeri people there isn’t a “return”. 

https://observers.france24.com/en/how-azerbaijan-erasing-traces-ancient-armenian-presence-nagorno-karabakh

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Asbarez.com

 

Azerbaijan Pressured Jordan to Drop Artsakh-Themed Film as Its Oscar Entry

by Asbarez Staff

 

 November 9, 2024

 

in Armenia, Arts & Culture, Artsakh, Featured Story, Latest, Movie, News, Top Stories

 

Vrej in 'My Sweet Land.' HAI Creative LLC/Sister Productions/Soilsíu Films

 

The Azerbaijani government pressured Jordan to withdraw Sareen Hairabedian’s documentary, “My Sweet Land,” as its official entry for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards, Deadline reported.

“Jordan withdrew its submission of ‘My Sweet Land‘ documentary film due to diplomatic pressures. The Royal Film Commission – Jordan (RFC) remains committed to showcasing and promoting all Jordanian films, including their participation in film festivals,” Jordan’s Royal Film Commission said in a statement confirming the details of a story reported Friday by Deadline.

The award-winning documentary follows 11-year-old Vrej, who dreams of becoming a dentist in his village in Artsakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave within Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been at the heart of a violent dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia since the 1980s. Artsakh fought for decades to become a breakaway state, an independence movement that ended with the Azerbaijani offensive of 2023.

The choice of the film by Jordan sparked controversy in Azerbaijan where its sympathetic account of the Armenians displaced by the conflict was viewed as taking an overtly anti-Azerbaijani stance.

Deadline had learned that the Azerbaijani government wrote to Jordan’s Foreign Ministry requesting it reconsider the film’s selection as its Oscar entry, which in turn put pressure on the Jordan’s Royal Film Commission to withdraw the film.

Sources at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences confirmed to Deadline that Jordan withdrew “My Sweet Land” for consideration as Best International Feature Film.

“This is very devastating news for our team that an emotional intimate story of a child’s love for his home and family was banned and silenced. As documentary filmmakers, this censorship compels us more than ever to share My Sweet Land protagonist Vrej’s story, which reflects the experiences of countless children around the world today, who deserve to dream freely without the threat of war and conflict,” Director Sareen Hairabedian and producer Azza Hourani told Deadline exclusively,

“After Jordan withdrew the film as a contender for Best International Feature Film, the Academy told filmmakers they could submit ‘My Sweet Land’ for consideration as Best Documentary Feature, if they followed standard qualification procedures. The filmmaking team has scrambled to arrange a qualifying run in the U.S.,” Deadline reported.

 

 

https://asbarez.com/azerbaijan-pressured-jordan-to-drop-my-sweet-land-as-its-oscar-entry/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGdNshleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHaD_G3z_NDuqjRIoKVbW65ykPeCJHUkiLH68OOdJgNjZryz8FL2NEB9-VA_aem_8F2ZRDPnaAqqEJvsm56ubA

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Nov 11 2024

 

Why Are There No Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh?

This special report documents how ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh were intentionally subjected to regular attacks, intimidation, deprivation of basic rights and adequate living conditions, and forced displacement by the Azerbaijani state. 

This report examines the situation for ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh for the period starting with the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020 and through the Azerbaijani military offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023 and its aftermath. It is an initial summary with a full, extended report to be released later. Through an international fact-finding effort that included hundreds of witness interviews and open-source data, the analysis aims to answer why there are no ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh as of May 2024. It documents how people in Nagorno-Karabakh were intentionally subjected to regular attacks, intimidation, deprivation of basic rights and adequate living conditions, and forced displacement. The evidence demonstrates that the Azerbaijani state acted upon a comprehensive, methodically implemented strategy to empty Nagorno-Karabakh of its ethnic Armenian population and historical and cultural presence.

 

About the Report

This fact-finding report was jointly prepared by Freedom House, International Partnership for Human Rights, Democracy Development Foundation, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly - Vanadzor, Protection of Rights without Borders NGO, Law Development and Protections Foundation, and Truth Hounds. Media Diversity Institute conducted the open-source investigation and verification. Talin Hitik provided substantial support editing the summary and the larger report. Anoush Baghdassarian made a significant contribution to editing several sections of the larger report. The methodology and questionnaires were prepared by Democracy Development Foundation, International Partnership for Human Rights, and Truth Hounds. The fact-finding mission was made possible with the support of Open Society Foundations and Freedom House. The fact-finding mission was coordinated by the Democracy Development Foundation.

Read the Full Report

Download PDF

https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2024/why-are-there-no-armenians-nagorno-karabakh

rabakh?

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Mediamax, Armenia

Nov 11 2024

 

 

The international fact-finding mission accuses Azerbaijan of ethnical cleansing

Yerevan /Mediamax/. According to a report released today from an international fact-finding mission, Azerbaijani authorities carried out ethnic cleansing against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh

 

 

The international fact-finding mission is composed of Freedom House and a coalition of six other partners - International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), Democracy Development Foundation (DDF), Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly–Vanadzor, Protection of Rights Without Borders, Law Development and Protection Foundation, Truth Hounds.

 

The report’s release comes as Baku hosts the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29).

 

The report found multiple cases of gross human rights violations, breaches of international humanitarian law, and violations of international criminal law by Azerbaijani authorities against ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, through extrajudicial killings, a monthslong blockade, forced displacement, and post-displacement policies of cultural erasure and property destruction.

 

The documented evidence aligns with the definition of ethnic cleansing put forward by a UN commission of experts in the context of the former Yugoslavia.

 

The fact-finding report also supports the conclusion that the acts documented in Nagorno-Karabakh constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

 

The report identifies a number of steps that democratic governments can take to address impunity.

 

The authors of the report, in particular, urge to support international efforts to prosecute crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, including by making a state referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC), implement targeted sanctions against Azerbaijani officials, military leaders, and individuals implicated in gross human rights violations and war crimes.

 

They also urge to uphold the rights of displaced ethnic Armenians and establish conditions for the safe and voluntary return of displaced Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh.

 

The full version of the report is available here: https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2024/why-are-there-no-armenians-nagorno-karabakh.

https://mediamax.am/en/news/karabakh/56220/

[MosJan]

 

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Armenpress.am

 

Politics09:00, 11 November 2024

Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian population’s right to return is part of Iran’s official position, says Ehsan Movahedian

Read the article in: فارسیFrançaisՀայերենРусскийTürkçe

 

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS. Iran’s official position regarding Nagorno-Karabakh has already been presented by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to which the Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh have the right to return to their homes, and their rights, life and property must be respected and maintained, Ehsan Movahedian, international relations specialist, lecturer and Caucasus expert at the Tehran ATU University has said.

In an interview with Armenpress, Movahedian, touching upon the 2023 Azerbaijani attack in Nagorno-Karabakh and the subsequent forced displacement of the 120,000 local Armenian population, recalled Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s statement that the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh have the right to return to their homes and their rights must be respected. 

“This is what we believe in, however, nevertheless we don’t have the tools to implement it. And I think it is the obligation of the government of Armenia to protect these people, for example, apply to international courts, utilize international law and rules, file complaints, force the Azerbaijani government to respect the rights of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population. This is Iran’s position,” Movahedian said. 

The vast majority of the forcibly displaced persons of Nagorno-Karabakh have settled in Armenia. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan previously said that in current conditions he doesn’t consider the return of NK Armenians to be realistic. 

 

 

 

Published by Armenpress, original at https://armenpress.am/en/article/1204445?fbclid=IwY2xjawGgj2ZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHYC8wNqR09P57ngUo551AWUIE2enFa6zFlZMnbxsDIcg-9ONa8y9eKuaGA_aem_1RbpRCZs6U_zlQj1gHRHSg

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Armenpress.am

 

Politics12:17, 11 November 2024

Why Are There No Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh? International and Armenian human rights organizations publish joint report

Read the article in: العربيةՀայերենРусский

Lilit Gasparyan

 

BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS. Through an international fact-finding effort that included hundreds of witness interviews and open-source data, authors of the Why Are There No Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh? Special Report concluded that the forced displacement of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians in 2023 constitutes ethnic cleansing and the perpetrators must be held accountable.

The fact-finding report was jointly prepared by Freedom House, International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), a Ukrainian organization specializing in investigating international crimes and several Armenian and leading human rights organizations.

Armenpress Brussels correspondent Lilit Gasparyan spoke with Simon Papuashvili, IPHR’s Director for South Caucasus. 

Papuashvili, touching upon the process of preparing the report, the conclusions and their next steps, said that they plan to apply to the International Criminal Court based on the gathered evidence, with a request to hold the perpetrators to account. Papuashvili gave a detailed explanation on the instruments through which it is possible to hold accountable in the international justice system the Azerbaijani leader and others involved in crimes against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.

 

Along with Freedom House and many other organizations, your organization prepared a fact-finding report. How and why have you decided to realize the report "Why are there no Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh?" 

I represent “International Partnership For Human Rights” (IPHR), which is an international NGO headquartered in Brussels and we have regional offices in Georgia and Ukraine. We work across Eastern Europe, Russia, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. So, this is our target region and as an organization, our mandate is to support local human rights groups and organizations in fulfilling their mandate. We have long-established partnerships with several leading Armenian civil society organizations with whom we have been working for over a decade now. 

We have been asked to conduct a project that would investigate international crimes that were committed in the context of the 2020 war, which we did. And then we have been monitoring the situation after the ceasefire agreement was signed and occasionally gathering evidence of large-scale clashes that happened in the period of the ceasefire. We organized one fact-finding mission in October 2022 to document crimes that Azerbaijani forces perpetrated within Armenian borders in September 2020. Then we have also been monitoring the impact of the Lachin Corridor blockade on the population of Nagorno Karabakh. When the Azerbaijani takeover happened on the 19th of September 2023 our Armenian partners reached out to us and asked us to help them investigate what was happening in terms of displacement, forced displacement of population from Nagorno Karabakh. We sat down with our partners and helped them develop a methodology to investigate forced displacement or ethnic cleansing. We have also helped to train about 25 Armenian civil society representatives who have been working since November last year to interview persons who were displaced from Nagorno Karabakh. 

Around 6 organizations were involved in this documentation project, including my organization, Freedom House, and a Ukrainian organization specializing in the investigation of international crimes, plus several Armenian and leading human rights organizations. Over 300 interviews were conducted with the persons displaced from Artsakh. And we have in parallel also been collecting open-source information, more specifically, information about the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in Artsakh using satellite imagery analysis. We have been gathering also what we call linkage evidence or evidence. That helps us determine which Azerbaijani units were involved in different times that we have been investigating to understand their common structure and to do what we lawyers call attribution. So, attribution of crimes to particular persons. Based on the evidence that we have examined, we can conclude that the events in question amount to a crime against humanity or possible displacement of the civilian population. 

The report calls what happened to Artsakh Armenians ethnic cleansing and considers the issue in the legal framework, especially from the point of view of international criminal, human, and humanitarian law perspectives. What are the conclusions you reached while preparing this report?

We have documented several systemic and gross human rights abuses and international crimes, including extrajudicial killings, torture, or displacement crime, of course, displacement, destruction of cultural objects, and destruction of property. These were the key crimes that we have documented. What is important to note is that these crimes were widespread, systematic, and part of the state policy of Azerbaijan which was intended to cleanse the entire territory from ethnic Armenians. 

Our investigation was not focusing just on what happened on the 19th of September or what happened in the days following, but also, we have taken into consideration how numerous ceasefire violations and numerous incidents have been happening throughout 2020, 2021, and 2022, have affected the sense of security of the population of Artsakh.

If you, for example, look into the elements of crimes under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it talks about the creation of a forcing environment as one of the elements. So again, based on the evidence that we have and based on hundreds of conversations that we had with displaced persons, we saw that people staying in Artsakh since 2020 did not feel secure and their sense of insecurity was a result of multiple acts of violence and affects their daily life, especially during the blockade. Everything, from the lack of medication to the feeling of isolation, contributed to that feeling, and then actually after the military operation on 19 September 2023 essentially did not leave any other choice to ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno Karabakh but to flee. And then we also looked into how this process of displacement happened and how it affected people. Our conclusion is that we're indeed dealing with ethnic cleansing. 

While talking about ethnic cleansing, the next step for sure should be accountability. The report clearly shows that Azerbaijan depopulated Nagorno Karabakh in a planned manner and with intention. What is the toolkit with which Azerbaijan can be held accountable? 

When we were designing this project or the documentation project, one of the reasons why we did it was to create historical memory, but that was not the primary purpose. We also wanted to initiate and engage with certain legal strategies that can help us close the impunity gap, which is very persistent, and also to find ways creatively to facilitate access to justice for ethnic Armenians who have been forced out of their land and to facilitate the reparations. We have identified a number of legal instruments and mechanisms to this end. 

One such instrument is the European Court of Human Rights. However, my organization is not involved in this because many skilled Armenian organizations are working with them to build and litigate cases before the European Court and also the Armenian government has brought a case against Azerbaijan to the European courts. But we are focusing more on individual criminal responsibility, so relying on the International Criminal Court, and to this end, we are considering pursuing opportunities that Armenia’s ratification of the Rome Statute is opening to us. So, we are currently in the process of preparing so-called Article 15 communications to the International Criminal Court, one of those communications will relate to multiple ceasefire violations that have been accompanied by war crimes committed by Azerbaijan within Armenia itself, and then our second communication is focusing on the forced transfer, or ethnic cleansing that has taken place since 19 September 2023. We intend to demonstrate to the office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court that these crimes that we have investigated are all within the jurisdiction of this Court and that it is in the interest of justice to open an investigation and prosecute those persons who are responsible for these crimes, because of their gravity and because of their scale. To make this happen and also to increase the chances or likelihood that the Court actually investigates, we are also talking to different countries that are parties to the Rome Statutes, mostly European countries but not only, to encourage them to make this so-called “State Party Referral”, which is one of the ways to trigger an investigation by the ICC. For example, this was done by over 40 countries in early 2022, when Russia unleashed a full-scale war against Ukraine. This could be done now by one or several countries that are interested in supporting our cause of closing the impunity gap. 

The other tool that we are considering pursuing is the so-called “Universal Jurisdiction Litigation”; what does ‘universal jurisdiction’ mean? It's a legal concept under which a country can prosecute an individual despite the nationality of this individual or despite where the crime has been committed. So, the idea is that some crimes are so serious by their nature that it is the obligation of civilized countries to prosecute those crimes. This is a legal concept that is quite well developed and has existed already for decades, and most European countries have possibilities under their criminal legislation to initiate investigations about events like the ones that are taking place in Artsakh. So, typically these are war crimes, crimes against humanity or crimes of genocide, and also crimes of torture and forced disappearances that are subject to Universal Jurisdiction Litigation. As we gather more evidence about perpetrators that we can link with the crimes that we have investigated, we intend to build cases against these perpetrators in different European countries. Our targets will be the Head of State of Azerbaijan, as well as other senior Azerbaijani officials or who we can link with the crimes in question and who have been involved either in conceiving, ordering, or actually perpetrating these crimes. Universal Jurisdiction can be also used to enable reparations for the victims. As you probably know, the corrupt political elite of Azerbaijan invests stolen money in what they consider safe jurisdictions —which are mostly European jurisdictions—, so this money is kept in different types of assets including property, but also company shares and other holdings. We are now in the process of mapping out where these assets might be and we intend to initiate multiple criminal cases in different European jurisdictions, where we are hoping to have perpetrators convicted and also hoping that victims can be compensated using these accounts and assets. 

And then the third quasi-legal mechanism that we intend to pursue is targeted sanctions. So, in the US it can be the Magnitsky Global Act, in the EU, it could be the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime. The UK has its own sanctions regime. Once we have completed our evidence packages, we will be asking these different countries or blocks of countries to sanction perpetrators that we have identified. We're using all available legal and quasi-legal avenues to seek accountability for these gross human rights abuses. We're hoping that one or several of those strategies will bring the results and the results will be putting names to things, identifying perpetrators, and then also facilitating reparations for the victims. 

Talking about legal obligations, that is possible and effective when it comes to countries or leaders who respect them. Contrary to many decisions of international courts, Azerbaijan continues its anti-Armenian and hateful, aggressive rhetoric and policy. How, or in general, is it possible to force official Baku to respect these decisions and the rights of Artsakh Armenians?

Sure, there are limitations when it comes to the enforcement of international law, and these limitations are more evident when you are dealing with certain legal mechanisms like the ICJ (International Court of Justice) or the European Court of Human Rights, where they do not deal with individuals’ or the perpetrators' criminal liability, but they deal with the state's responsibility. For example, when the European Court of Human Rights fines violations and asks the country to pay compensation to the victims, this money comes not from the pockets of the perpetrators, but it comes from the pockets of the taxpayers. It's paid from the state budgets. The impact of this is much more limited, but the accountability avenues that I have described are about individual criminal liability. So, let's say we succeed within the Universal Jurisdiction case in any of the European countries against senior Azerbaijani officials. These officials, in the best case, will not be able to travel to Europe, because if they do, then they will be arrested. 

Plus, in many European countries, we can have in absentia trials, so these individuals can be prosecuted without their presence, without their appearance before the court, and potentially be convicted without their presence. And if we can successfully obtain convictions then we can use the assets that belong to them that are here in the West, not in Azerbaijan. We can confiscate those assets and give them to the victims. The same is true also for the International Criminal Court. When it comes to the International Criminal Court, the added value of this court is that this court can potentially go after heads of state and issue arrest warrants, like it did, for example, for Putin. And now Putin will never be able to come to Europe in his lifetime, because if he comes, he will be arrested. So, these are not bulletproof solutions, but they are legal strategies that can on one hand increase the cost for the wrongdoing of authoritarian leaders like Ilham Aliyev and can help us find ways to compensate the victims. 

As you mentioned, the West didn’t hesitate for a second to activate all mechanisms against Putin and his country just after the war in Ukraine was launched. What Azerbaijan did in Nagorno Karabakh is exactly the same as what Putin is doing in Ukraine. But the reaction of the collective West is quite different, there is always a kind of hesitation when it comes to Azerbaijan. When and how can they, if of course, they can, overcome this hesitation? 

I think it's important to remember that sanctions are an inherently political tool. So, when decisions pertaining to sanctions are made, they take into consideration political, economic, and security assets. The reason why Europe and also the US were probably more committed and more prompt in terms of responding to a full-scale war of Russia against Ukraine is because they felt directly threatened. They felt that if they did not do something to constrain Russia and its ability to wage this war of aggression against Ukraine, they would be the next targets. That's why the political will among the Western political players was common. For Azerbaijan, unfortunately, you know and I agree, that if you compare the situation with Russia-Ukraine, and Azerbaijan-Armenia, Russia is three times bigger than Ukraine. So, it's Azerbaijan in comparison to Armenia. Azerbaijan's military resources are —in terms of proportional comparison— bigger compared to Armenia’s, and so are Russia's compared to Ukraine, and then, we have seen with our own eyes the brutality and cruelty of the Azerbaijan forces, including against civilian —not just military— men or women. 

Unfortunately, Azerbaijan is not perceived as a threat by European nations or by the United States, and therefore there is less of a political will to confront Azerbaijan for its crimes. In the end, in the world in which we live, human rights, the rule of law, and good governance are things that are often used as lip service, and political security, and economic considerations override these considerations. But that's why our strategy is not to rely on political tools like sanctions, because you know we have to be realistic about the likelihood of sanctions being used against Azerbaijan, but when it comes to legal tools, like for example, the International Criminal Court, they can have more predictability and although ICC is also not 100% free from political influence, but relatively speaking and with the right approach we can succeed in our efforts to use this tool to bring human rights violating perpetrators to account. 

And in the end, like every report, this report also has recommendations for all parties, how do you summarize them? What are the main steps that will permit the Armenians of Artsakh to feel a positive change will happen?

Most of our recommendations pertain to justice and accountability, and what we consider necessary is to serve justice and serving justice means investigating these crimes by competent authorities internationally. Identifying and punishing the perpetrators and enabling compensations to the victims and also ideally providing necessary conditions for the return of the displaced ethnic Armenians. The last one is probably, and unfortunately, less realistic, probably given the current political situation, and the geopolitical situation, but we still insist that from the legal point of view, persons displaced have the right to return to their homes, to their land, and to continue their life peacefully. 

Lilit Gasparyan

 

 

 

Published by Armenpress, original at https://armenpress.am/en/article/1204563?fbclid=IwY2xjawGgkBxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHTMF2xRbhaLvXymqhM5KPhORCG3V8whzzIgmbwmH8j_pAi9DMEouzFHONQ_aem_uK7T1IyquwTBrL9Kl0nxJA

[Yervant1]

Nov 14 2024

 

Helping Armenian Christians Who Fled for Their Lives

 

11/14/2024 Armenia (International Christian Concern) – When we first met an Armenian refugee named Narine, she couldn’t stop crying.

The trauma of her family’s forced exit from their ancestral homeland of Artsakh and the hardships they had faced as refugees had broken her spirit. Sorrow seized her as she watched her husband work long hours attempting to provide for their family, only to earn the equivalent of $5 a day. Unable to use her cosmetics training to earn extra income, she felt hopeless.

Then ICC offered Narine the equipment she needed to start a small business. The sudden gratitude and joy Narine felt was so intense that it kept her awake that night.

“Is there still hope?” she said in a text to her friend. “Could it be that God heard my cry?”

Narine’s family is one of the 24 Armenian refugee families ICC helped this year. These beneficiaries are only a few of the 120,000 ethnic Armenian Christians who were forced to flee Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, in recent years. The genocidal actions of the Azerbaijani military, which targeted Christians during its nine-month blockade of a humanitarian corridor in late 2022, forced the families out of their homeland to find food.

By the end of 2023, ICC provided 120 Armenians with food and clothing. This year, we helped 18 families start small businesses, like Narine’s, to build a sustainable future in Armenia.

A woman named Ani stood in disbelief when she received equipment to start her own business.

“I am not believing that this is reality,” she told an ICC staffer. “I am feeling that I am in a dream and don’t want to wake up.”

Daniel, whose family fled Artsakh in 2020 due to persecution, also expressed gratitude for the small business equipment he received.

“In the past four years, this is the first time that happiness has entered our home after all that we had lost,” he said. “Now, we are feeling there is hope.”

With your generous support, we can create 20 more small business projects to help even more Christian refugee families thrive. Please join us in giving other brothers and sisters of ours in Armenia the gift of hope.

https://www.persecution.org/2024/11/14/helping-armenian-christians-who-fled-for-their-lives/

 

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eurasianet

Nov 19 2024

 

 

Freedom House report: Azerbaijan engaged in “ethnic cleansing” of Karabakh Armenians

The findings “constitute war crimes.”

Ani Avetisyan Nov 19, 2024

 

A recently released report by the rights watchdog Freedom House concludes that the forced migration of an estimated 100,000 Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh in September 2023 amounted to “ethnic cleansing” by Azerbaijani forces during their complete takeover of the territory.

“Azerbaijani authorities waged a deliberate campaign to empty Nagorno Karabakh of its ethnic Armenian population,” according to a Freedom House statement. The report’s conclusions were based on a fact-finding mission conducted by Freedom House representatives, along with researchers from six other partner organizations. 

“The documented evidence aligns with the definition of ethnic cleansing put forward by a UN commission of experts in the context of the former Yugoslavia,” the report reads. “The acts documented in Nagorno-Karabakh constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity”. 

The report’s release was timed to coincide with the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29), the annual UN forum on climate change, held this year in the Azerbaijani capital Baku.

The Armenian population of Karabakh fled the breakaway region in late September last year following a nine-month blockade and a lightning military offensive by Azerbaijani troops. Since then, the Azerbaijani government has moved to rebuild Karabakh: Armenians say reconstruction efforts in the territory have featured the destruction of buildings and monuments of significant Armenian cultural value.

The Freedom House report is the first instance of a watchdog group or international body formally classifying the events in September 2023 in Karabakh as ethnic cleansing.

A UN report based on a mission undertaken in late 2023 did not find sufficient evidence of the use of violence or intimidation during the Armenian population’s mass exodus from Karabakh. “The mission was struck by the sudden manner in which the local population left their homes and the suffering the experience must have caused,” the UN report noted. “The mission did not come across any reports – neither from the local population interviewed nor from the interlocutors – of incidences of violence against civilians following the latest ceasefire.”

Azerbaijani officials have dismissed the accusations of ethnic cleansing, claiming that the displacement in Karabakh was “voluntary” and that the Karabakh Armenians were given a choice to stay and live under Azerbaijani rule. 

The Armenian and Azerbaijani governments have both filed suits in the International Court of Justice relating to the Karabakh conflict and alleged war crimes. Armenia is demanding that the UN Court hold Azerbaijan responsible for misdeeds committed against the Armenian population during the Second Karabakh War. Azerbaijan, in a counter lawsuit, has dismissed allegations of cleansing, while accusing Armenia of criminal actions in forcing Azerbaijani citizens off their land during the First Karabakh War in the late 1980s-early ‘90s. While it may take years to resolve the suits, the court has issued several interim judgments, including upholding displaced Armenians’ right of return to Karabakh.

https://eurasianet.org/freedom-house-report-azerbaijan-engaged-in-ethnic-cleansing-of-karabakh-armenians

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Azatutyun.am

 

Former Karabakh Official Sentenced For Spying For Azerbaijan

Նոյեմբեր 22, 2024

• Naira Bulghadarian

 

Nagorno-Karabakh - Sargis Galstian speaks during an event in Karabakh. (File photo)

 

An Armenian court on Friday convicted a former Nagorno-Karabakh official, who did not flee the region right after its recapture by Azerbaijan, of spying for Baku and sentenced him to 18 years in prison.

The man, Sargis Galstian, and his wife were among a few dozen Karabakh Armenians who did not flee to Armenia following Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive that triggered the mass exodus of Karabakh’s population. The couple arrived in Armenia through the Lachin corridor in March.

Galstian was arrested and charged with espionage the next day. Armenian law-enforcement authorities gave very few details of the accusation brought against him, saying only that he admitted working for Azerbaijani security services during and after the 2020 war in Karabakh.

Galstian’s lawyer Aleksandr Kochubayev said in June that he has renounced the espionage confession because it was made under duress. Kochubayev claimed that masked interrogators threatened to kill his client and arrest his wife and children if he refuses to incriminate himself.

Armenia’s Investigative Committee flatly denied the claim. According to the lawyer, the law-enforcement agency did not come up with any other evidence of the crime attributed to Galstian.

Galstian’s trial took place behind the closed doors. Kochubayev said that he will appeal against the verdict.

Galstian is a veteran of the 1991-1994 war with Azerbaijan who held various Karabakh leadership positions in the following decades. His decision to stay in Stepanakert fueled speculation that he is collaborating with Azerbaijani authorities.

Galstian did not publicly explain the decision. It is also not clear why he ultimately decided to leave Karabakh.

Galstian and his wife were escorted to the Armenian border by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). An ICRC spokeswoman in Yerevan said in April that it has also helped more than 50 other Karabakh Armenians to “voluntarily move to Armenia” since October 2023.

 

 

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/33212505.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawGuaylleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdNITWxzYpSM3PMh6qLK0QvinnV0_m9GspZ4wqNZ8H4jI1pug6SKxWaKSA_aem_uwfn7DWhvQKtAk-gnjX2aQ

[MosJan]

 

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Asbarez.com

 

Artsakh’s Dadivank Given to Azerbaijan’s So-Called ‘Albanian-Udi’ Community

by Asbarez Staff

 

 November 27, 2024

 

in Armenia, Artsakh, Featured Story, Latest, News, Top Stories

 

The Dadivank Armenian Monastery. Photo by: Nerses Matinyan

 

The Dadivank Monastery, which is located in occupied Artsakh, has been handed over to Azerbaijan’s so-called Udi community, Monument Watch reported.

After the end of the Artsakh War in 2020, Azerbaijan’s regime began its campaign of misappropriating Armenian cultural heritage. The Albanian-Udi, a Christian people who follow the Armenian Gregorian Church, were invited by the government to use former Armenian religious sites, including the Dadivank Monastery, for their own religious purposes.

Although the historic inscriptions preserved on the walls of Dadivank, as well as the khachkars on display, are tied directly to Armenians, Azerbaijan continues to push false narratives in an attempt to rewrite history.

Azerbaijan’s appropriation of Armenian cultural and religious heritage has been carried out using a “methodological manual” of propaganda built on a number of false premises, reported the Armenia-based “Geghard” Scientific Analytical Foundation.

According to Azerbaijanis, cultural sites that are linked to ethnic Armenians, especially those that are inscribed with Armenian script, are from the modern era. They claim that these historic sites were tampered with by Armenians either throughout the 19th century or during what they call “years of occupation” by Armenians in Artsakh.

This exact tactic has been used in the case of a 10th century Armenian fortress called Amberd. According to Faik Ismayilov, a researcher at the A. Bakikhanov Institute of History and Ethnology of Azerbaijan’s National Academy of Sciences, the Armenian inscriptions on the walls of the Vahramashen Church, located next to Amberd, were added in the early 20th century.

Based on several false claims made by scientists from Azerbaijan’s Academy of Sciences, Armenians allegedly started committing “material and spiritual crimes against Albanian churches” starting in 1836, when the “Albanian Church became a diocese was subjected to Etchmiadzin Church,” reported the Azertac Azerbaijan State News Agency.

This same false claim, that Armenians are adding inscriptions to cultural or religious heritage sites, has also been applied to the Dadivank Armenian Monastery, which came under Azerbaijani control in late November 2020.

Recently, Azerbaijani media outlet Report.az published a brief article, titled “The Major Azerbaijani Monastery Khudavang Subjected to Armenian Forgeries.” According to the article, between 1993 and 2020, “Armenians attempted to falsify the monastery’s history by presenting it as Armenian. For instance, the symbols of the complex were supposedly replaced, different crosses were installed, ancient Armenian inscriptions were added to the walls, and old Udi-Albanian graves were destroyed.”

Armenian inscriptions and carvings on the walls of Dadivank. Photo by: Nerses Matinyan

In 2021, representatives of Azerbaijan’s Udi community visited Dadivank to conduct religious services, lead by head of the Albanian-Udi Christian Community Robert Mobili. Mobili is known for backing Azerbaijan’s false claims about Armenian heritage.

In 2024, L’Osservatore Romano, the official daily newspaper of the Vatican, published an article titled “Dadivank, Gandzasar, and Khatiravank Monasteries in the Clouds.” In the article, Dadivank and Gandzasar are not linked to Armenian heritage, but that of Albanian, with no shred of evidence.

The Azerbaijani government continues its anti-Armenian campaign of falsifying history by manipulating and concealing information, and using misinformation to rewrite history by creating a new narrative.

 

 

https://asbarez.com/dadivank-given-to-azerbaijans-albanian-udi-christian-community/?fbclid=IwY2xjawG0-z1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcGlynKJAYHlYcMNZD59D6etgHzH5Six5XJQ9D3-_lE1_dYVTYLTkvsKvA_aem_40rNHNuWVTd7tO0SPPKUoQ

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Armenpress.am

 

Politics13:03, 13 December 2024

Former ICC chief prosecutor sees opportunity for Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians’ return

Read the article in: العربيةEspañolفارسیFrançaisՀայերենРусский

3 minute read

Davit Mamyan

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS.  Former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo has expressed certainty that the people of Nagorno-Karabakh have all the possibilities to return to their homeland.

“I definitely see an opportunity for return of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Ocampo told Armenpress during the 5th Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide in Yerevan. “This cannot be ignored. You must continue to struggle. The day you stop fighting, you lose. It is necessary to help their struggle for their right to return,” Ocampo said, adding that Azerbaijan has acknowledged that the Armenians have the right to be present in Nagorno-Karabakh, therefore it is necessary to struggle for the rights of the NK Armenians.

He said the Azerbaijani actions in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 amounted to genocide. He said that genocide is not solely defined as mass killings like in 1915.

“All developments that took place in Nagorno-Karabakh contain all methods and types of genocide, the creation of conditions for the destruction of a group of people: it was the blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the exodus of the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as the serious phycological harm inflicted upon Armenians, the fear, etc. These are all indications of genocide. And that was genocide,” Ocampo said, adding that in all these cases the people must be protected, their rights must be restored.

Speaking about the 1915 Armenian Genocide, Ocampo said that the Armenians are first of all fighting for justice and remembrance.

“Armenia shows that fighting for remembrance is important,” he said.

Asked whether he believes that Turkey could someday recognize the Armenian Genocide, Ocampo said, “We don’t know, but we must involve Turkey and explain. The younger generation is different. I think we can involve them and discuss this issue.”

Ocampo said the focus now should be on the events in Nagorno-Karabakh, and particularly what’s happening with the 23 Armenians imprisoned in Azerbaijan. “They are hostages, and the message of keeping them hostage is that if you go back to Nagorno-Karabakh, you will get attacked. We must do something for them,” the former ICC chief prosecutor said.

 

 

 

Published by Armenpress, original at https://armenpress.am/en/article/1207388?fbclid=IwY2xjawHJ4WZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZ3Lq5UBon4E9foaVKbLCiRdf-ZqUZbeG6fb1S7h4uMyTsrMTDYMWpzmGw_aem_DnrciW1Qp744C-ZOqaQ3eQ

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The Tablet, UK

Dec 16 2024

 

 

Armenian bishop asks UK Christians to recognise ‘tragedy’ in Nagorno-Karabakh

 

Bishop Hovakim Manukyan argued that the bond between Christian communities made it a “necessity” to respond to threats to Christians around the world.

 

The head of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the British Isles warned that the destruction of Armenian heritage in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region was “a tragedy for all Christians and humanity”.

Bishop Hovakim Manukyan of the Armenian Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland discussed “Ecumenism and Solidarity” in an address to the Advent dinner of the charity Fellowship and Aid to the Christians of the East (FACE) on 6 December at Allen Hall.

Putting aside his prepared remarks to “speak from the heart”, he described his experience of ecumenical relations between the Armenian and Catholic Churches, in particular the visit of Pope John Paul II to Armenia in 2001 to mark 1,700 years since its “baptism” as the first Christian state.

Bishop Manukyan argued that the bond between Christian communities made it a “necessity” to respond to threats to Christians around the world, including in Nagorno-Karabakh – also called Artsakh – which Armenia and Azerbaijan have contested for the past 30 years.

He said that conflict in the region in 2020 and the offensive by Azerbaijani forces in September 2023 had displaced 120,000 Armenians and led to the destruction of churches, monasteries and khachkars – the carved cross-stones distinctive to Armenian Christian culture. He also condemned the treatment of Armenian political prisoners held by the Azerbaijani regime.

“Artsakh’s heritage is a vital part of the world’s spiritual and cultural patrimony, and its erasure is an insult to all who value history and faith,” said Manukyan, arguing that the “spiritual connection” between Christians demanded mutual support amid crises.

“Ecumenism, at its core, is about hope. Hope that one day, the Body of Christ will be united, sharing in the same Eucharist,” he said. “This hope sustains us and inspires those Christians who suffer persecution in the Middle East and beyond. They know they are not alone – that their brothers and sisters are praying and acting on their behalf.”

The chairman of FACE, John Adam Fox, said in his own address that it was essential “that Western Christians find all manner of means to support and encourage the Eastern Christians”, especially in the Holy Land and the Middle East where they are most threatened.

“Without Christians in those lands, the Catholic Church will be as a vine cut off from its roots and will be much the worse for it,” he said.

 

https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/armenian-bishop-asks-uk-christians-to-recognise-tragedy-in-nagorno-karabakh/

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Azatutyun.am

 

Ruben Vardanyan Faces More Charges In Azerbaijan

Դեկտեմբեր 16, 2024

 

Nagorno-Karabakh - Ruben Vardanyan, the Karabakh premier, addresses a rally in Stepanakert, December 25, 2022.

 

The Azerbaijani authorities have reportedly brought more criminal charges against Armenian billionaire and former Nagorno-Karabakh premier Ruben Vardanyan more than one year after capturing him during the exodus of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population.

“If convicted, Vardanyan faces the grim prospect of life imprisonment,” read a statement released by his family and lawyer on Monday. “The new charges presented against Ruben Vardanyan fall under 20 different articles of Azerbaijan’s Criminal Code.”

“Illustrating the extent to which the regime is desperate to justify its ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh and illegal imprisonment of its former leaders, the fabricated evidence is presented in more than 25,000 pages across 100 volumes, all written in Azeri,” the statement said, adding that its details are hidden from Vardanyan on “national security” grounds.

“This approach is clearly designed for [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev to justify holding a secret trial before a tribunal that will be neither independent nor impartial,” it quoted the American lawyer, Jared Genser, as saying. He described the charges as a “brazen attempt to blame everything that the Azeri regime did in Nagorno-Karabakh on Ruben.”

“We are afraid that we might not be able to see him again if the democratic world does not act to put an end to this nonsense,” Vardanyan’s son David said for his part.

Vardanyan, who held the second-highest post in Karabakh’s leadership from November 2022 to February 2023, was arrested at an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin corridor as he fled the region along with tens of thousands of its ordinary residents displaced by an Azerbaijani offensive. He was charged with “financing terrorism,” illegally entering Karabakh and supplying its armed forces with military equipment. He denies the accusations.

Vardanyan was reportedly put in a punishment cell in an Azerbaijani prison last April after he went on hunger strike to demand the immediate release of himself and seven other Karabakh Armenian leaders also jailed by Baku. In a subsequent appeal sent to the UN Committee against Torture, Vardanyan’s family and Genser said he was denied water, forced to stand for many hours and subjected to sleep deprivation.

Baku has denied the claims. It has barred Genser from visiting Azerbaijan and talking to his client.

The Armenian government maintains that it has been trying hard to have Vardanyan and at least 22 other Armenians remaining in Azerbaijani captivity freed. Its domestic critics dismiss these assurances. They say that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian actually helped Baku legitimize Vardanyan’s continuing imprisonment with his scathing comments about the tycoon.

Speaking at an August 31 news conference in Yerevan, Pashinian wondered who had told Vardanyan to renounce Russian citizenship and move to Karabakh in 2022 and “for what purpose.” He seemed to echo Azerbaijani leaders’ earlier claims that Vardanyan was dispatched to Karabakh by Moscow to serve Russian interests there.

Vardanyan hit back at Pashinian in a September statement issued from the Azerbaijani jail and publicized by his family. According to the latter, Azerbaijani interrogators asked the tycoon questions “in connection with” Pashinian’s comments.

 

 

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/33241700.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawHNzMVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHVKJf3UyfNQYoT84lNZLSmQGpI0Q6VO4z-feAJCWRz2H-gzUklf3_zx1cA_aem_OOn3hy1Okev3bwDq-Evb6A

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1945

Dec 23 2024

 

Israel Betrayed Armenians. Will It Betray Syrian Kurds Now Too?

 

by Michael Rubin

 

 

September 27, 2020 began as a quiet Sunday morning in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Armenian-populated region that, at first glance, looks like Switzerland: Green field, rolling farms, and snow-capped mountains with churches and monasteries dotting mountainsides. It was just days after the 100th anniversary of the Ottoman invasion of independent Armenia at the tail end of the Armenian Genocide, but that anniversary had passed with minimal bluster from the Turks and the Azerbaijanis.

Then the explosion began, Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians described to me when I visited weeks later. Utilizing Israeli drones and munitions, Azerbaijan launched a surprise attack on the self-governing Armenian enclave, the first of many times over the next three years in which Azerbaijan broke ceasefires until it completed Nagorno-Kabarakh’s ethnic cleansing.

Anger toward Israel remains deep among the Nagorno-Karabakh refugees, Armenia proper, and the broader Armenian community.

Frankly, they are right. Israel is one of the dwindling number of Western countries that does not recognize the Armenian Genocide. That anger has persisted as Azerbaijan has systematically began dismantling Armenian churches and sandblasting inscriptions on monasteries, some over a millennium old. It was a short-term and self-defeating strategy on Israel’s part, as Israel’s backing of Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians and destruction of cultural heritage created a precedent that could be used against Jews living in the West Bank, especially among Palestinians who deny any Jewish connection to the land. 

 

Israelis—commentator Mordechai Kedar, for example—may argue that Azerbaijan is a haven for Jews, but this is increasingly false. The arguments Kedar relies upon outdated numbers and repeats the same tactics Iranian partisans used to argue that the Islamic Republic was simply anti-Israel, not antisemitic. The reality is that Azerbaijan has hemorrhaged its Jews for a reason. When population statistics remain unchanged for decades on end, it is a sign those statistics are outdated if not false.

Nor do Israel’s realist arguments to justify the Israel arms-for-Azerbaijani hold water. Azerbaijan may once have been a crucial source of energy for Israel, but the Abraham Accords opened new channels absent the moral baggage inherent in helping a racist dictator eliminate a minority community. Privately, all but those wanting something Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev acknowledges how repressive and unhinged Aliyev has become; Aliyev himself does not try to hide his agenda. Nor does Israel show itself cognizant of Azerbaijan’s true role when Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan openly plans violence against Israel and bolsters Turkey’s own domestic military industry but uses Azerbaijan to continue trade with the Jewish state. Israel needs to remove its strategic blinders: Every Israeli delivery to Baku provides technology Ankara can use against Jerusalem.

Israel’s complicitly in Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic cleansing represents a stain not easily removed, but it can also provide a lesson not to repeat: Short term deals with Israel’s ideological adversaries do not bring peace; instead, they embolden enemies. Turkey may present one face to tourists in Istanbul, Bodrum, or Antalya, but ideologically, it works to eradicate Middle Eastern minorities, be they Armenian or Chaldean Christians, Syrian Kurds, Yezidi, Alawi or Jews. 

Syrian Kurds now face existential peril as the Turkish army bares down. Turkey’s accusation that the Kurds represent a terror threat is nonsense; rather, Turkey objects to the Kurds’ liberalism, their self-governance, and their rejection of Erdogan Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Islam, an interpretation of Islam historically foreign to the region.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2024/12/israel-betrayed-armenians-will-it-betray-syrian-kurds-now-too/

[Yervant1]

Armenpress.am

 

Politics10:13, 23 December 2024

Negotiation process was always about return of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan – PM Pashinyan

Read the article in: EspañolFrançaisՀայերենქართულიРусскийTürkçe

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The negotiation process around the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution, ever since its beginning in 1994, has been about the return of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said.

“Since 1994, meaning after the ceasefire, the negotiation process from the very beginning had been about the return of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. The negotiation process did not have any other content. The narratives about another content were introduced in the Republic of Armenia exclusively for resolving internal political issues. In this context I made a big mistake: In 2018, upon becoming acquainted with the negotiation content, I did not admit the abovementioned to myself (the patriotism of the well-known type did not allow me to) and therefore I did not clarify it all to the people,” Pashinyan said on social media.

 

 

 

Published by Armenpress, original at https://armenpress.am/en/article/1208110?fbclid=IwY2xjawHXEV9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQ3cwYdOFSUebJD71-QZZzu7d8QlTeBT1h-p4vM6HzUNYuNpkNcVvxgQ-Q_aem_T-nkuTeAgZEL8pfzim0ZHw

[MosJan]

 

[Yervant1]

Armenian National Committee of Australia

Jan 5 2025

 

#FreeArmenianHostages: Paul Fletcher MP Sponsors Armenian Political Prisoner Davit Ishkhanyan

 

 

 

 

CANBERRA: Paul Fletcher MP - Federal Member for Bradfield has penned a powerful letter to the Azerbaijani Embassy calling for the immediate release of Mr Davit Ishkhanyan, former Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh.

The letter addressed to Mr Vagif Jafarov, Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan, calls on the Azerbaijani representative to provide regular updates as to the condition of Mr Ishkhanyan’s mental and physical health on a monthly basis.

Mr Ishkhanyan is one of 23 Armenian Hostages known to be held captive by Azerbaijani forces since the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh in September 2023.

The letter reads: “I had the pleasure of personally meeting with Mr Ishkhanyan in our Federal Parliament alongside a dozen of my parliamentary colleagues back in 2019 and thus the conditions of his arrest and detention by the State Security Service of Azerbaijani are of particularly special concern to me.”

Mr Fletcher ended his letter with the following powerful remarks: “The world is watching Azerbaijan. Australia is watching Azerbaijan.”

Fletcher who also serves as the Co-Chair of the Australia-Armenia Inter-Parliamentary Union in Federal Parliament championed a historic first-ever motion on the Republic of Artsakh in Federal Parliament calling for pro-Armenian measures including the release of all Armenian Hostages. Read more about the motion here.

The Armenian National Committee of Australia has expressed its deep gratitude to Mr Fletcher for his powerful letter and commitment to the release of all Armenian Hostages.

 

https://www.anc.org.au/news/Media-Releases/-FreeArmenianHostages--Paul-Fletcher-MP-Sponsors-Armenian-Political-Prisoner-Davit-Ishkhanyan

[Yervant1]

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POLITICO

Jan 7 2025

 

How Charles Michel waded into a minefield in Nagorno-Karabakh

The former Council President wanted to intervene in a bitter conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He ended up mired in problems of his own, excerpts from a new book on the region reveal.

 

Gabriel Gavin covered the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh for POLITICO, and the following excerpts are taken from his forthcoming book on the conflict, “Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

Ruben Petrosyan was getting ready for work when he heard the first explosion.

The father of three had a desk in the unassuming office building that housed Nagorno-Karabakh’s security services. For weeks, he and his colleagues had known something big was coming. They knew it when their wives came back empty-handed after lining up at the shops for rations of bread and sour cream. They knew it when troops on the contact line spotted a massive Azerbaijani build up. And they knew it on Tuesday September 19, 2023, when the war started. 

Minutes before the first barrage began, up in the hills, volunteers and conscripts serving in the Nagorno-Karabakh Defence Army began noticing that the Russian peacekeepers who stood between them and enemy lines were jumping into vehicles and leaving in a hurry. Across the dusty gulf of no-man’s-land, they could see camouflage netting being pulled off Azerbaijani military hardware and ambulances lining up on the asphalt roads leading to the positions opposite, flanked by barbed wire and landmines.

Ruben’s wife, Nouné, had taken their two girls to the dentist. He grabbed his jacket and ran out of the house to go and pick them up. An air raid siren was ringing out all over the city, families were racing to the shelters, shops pulling down their metal shutters. The streets were a picture of chaos and confusion, the roads choked with parents trying to pick up their children from schools and kindergartens across town. Ruben found his family, took them to a shelter under a church next to the security services building, then went into work. They didn’t know it yet, but Nouné and the children would spend the next six days there. 

As the Russians abandoned their posts — reneging on their pledge to protect the breakaway region following a war in 2020 — Nagorno-Karabakh’s troops dug in for what would be the final battle in three decades of fighting over the territory, inside Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized borders but held by Armenian separatists since the fall of the Soviet Union. Within a week, local forces had been overwhelmed and the entire population was packing its bags to flee, taking what few possessions they could pack into cars or strap on the top of buses as they did.

The violent end of Nagorno-Karabakh may have been a sign of Russia’s diminishing influence as a result of its catastrophic invasion of Ukraine, but it was a personal defeat too for the then-president of the European Council, Charles Michel. At the same time as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was negotiating new fossil fuel deals with Baku, the bloc’s frequently sidelined other leader was trying to take on the role of mediator in the country’s conflict with Armenia.

The mild-mannered Belgian, an ex-prime minister, was theoretically in charge of the EU’s foreign policy but, in practice, spent his time picking individual issues to weigh in on. For nearly two years, whenever journalists reached out to Michel’s office with queries about some aspect of European affairs, they were batted away with a simple answer: He was busy trying to prevent a war in the South Caucasus.

Eyeing the power vacuum created by Russia’s strategic collapse in its former imperial hinterlands, this was an opportunity for the EU to step up, bolster its influence and replace Moscow’s brutal realpolitik with values-based humanitarian considerations. But, despite efforts to build relations with both sides, Michel’s campaign suffered from a fundamental failure to understand who he was dealing with — or how high the stakes were.

If Armenia and Azerbaijan were talking, the Eurocrats concluded, at least it meant they weren’t shooting at each other. But, in reality, they were doing both. The near-daily clashes claiming hundreds of soldiers’ lives along the line of contact continued unabated, and EU officials, determined not to lose their role as impartial facilitators, refused to comment on who was to blame. Whenever there was even a hint of criticism aimed at Baku, Azerbaijan’s most prominent commentators would loudly warn that the EU was losing its perceived neutrality. 

To speak to officials in Brussels was to enter a parallel universe where everything was moving in the right direction. Careful diplomacy was the only way to prevent misunderstandings, they had opined in 2022, when Azerbaijan launched its Two Day War against Armenia. The talks were really promising, they insisted a few months later, as the blockade began and people started to starve.

Peace, they maintained, had never been closer—just as it seemed more than ever like another war was on the cards. Every move Azerbaijan made to bring about the inevitable showdown shifted the frame of reference for diplomacy; they might have imposed the blockade but they’ve at least now agreed to let the Red Cross operate, so that’s a positive development, the thinking went. Baku was taking three steps forward and winning plaudits whenever it moved a millimeter back. 

The heart of the problem was that the people in the room simply weren’t qualified to deal with the conflict they had waded into. Wars in and around Europe for almost the entire post-World War II history of the continent had been dealt with either by individual member countries, by the U.S. or, more recently, by NATO. There simply wasn’t the institutional knowledge or understanding of how to conduct this kind of high-stakes foreign policy among officials in the European Council or the European External Action Service.

In the arena of Western politics where they’d cut their teeth, the worst imaginable outcome was that a poorly phrased missive might rile an EU country’s prime minister or upset an industry lobby group. Now, they’d inserted themselves into a bitter ethnic dispute where the worst thing that could happen was somebody burning down your house and cutting your head off. That was simply unimaginable for career diplomats who put total faith in the idea that no problem was too big to be sorted out over a plate of sandwiches in a Brussels meeting room. 

And while the EU had been represented in talks over other international crises, like the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian War, it had played second fiddle to more serious diplomatic services like those of the US, France and Britain. Now, Brussels thought it had what it took to run the show.

That paradigm counted doubly for Michel. His team constantly talked up his credentials as the former prime minister of Belgium. But being at the helm of a tiny Western European nation with no notable active foreign policy conflicts or international disputes did not instantly turn a lifelong centrist politician into a titan on the world stage. Worse still, he wasn’t even a titan in his own office.

As European Commission president, von der Leyen wielded far more practical power than Michel did in his largely symbolic role. And she was set on doing her gas deal with Baku, no matter whether it compromised Michel’s ability to act as a mediator or not. The pair had a famously fractious relationship, both vying to position themselves as the true owner of key issues like foreign affairs. In 2021, during a joint meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, von der Leyen was visibly shocked when her Belgian colleague darted in to grab the only available chair opposite the Turkish president, relegating her to a nearby couch.

But, as the offensive began, triggering the mass exodus from Nagorno- Karabakh, Michel dropped what had been his flagship issue faster than anyone could have expected. Apart from an initial call for restraint and respect for the rights of the Karabakh Armenians on Twitter, he almost never again commented on the issue publicly.

Through the 24 hours of fighting, and the four days of chaos and uncertainty that followed, those in the Nagorno-Karabakh security services had tried to do their jobs as best they could, coordinating the response and tracking the enemy troops getting closer and closer to the capital. Now they’d done all they could. Ruben Petrosyan had left the office to try and gather what he could from his house, in a suburb where there had been sightings of Azerbaijani forces.

There was a suitcase by the door, stuffed with all the pictures Nouné had taken down off the walls, along with documents and some essentials for their children. It had been there since after the 2020 war. Now, friends, cousins and colleagues were ringing around desperately trying to work out how to make their escape. The Facebook pages and message groups that they’d used to swap scant supplies during the blockade suddenly lit up again. 

“Doesn’t anyone have two litres of petrol? That’s how much it should take to get to Kornidzor.” 

“Who has a truck that can carry furniture? I can pay.” 

“Is anyone from Berdashen village? My mother lives there and I can’t get in touch with her.” 

Already having been let down by Russia, the murderous, disinterested state that had once claimed to be their ally, other Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians began wondering whether they had been truly left to fend for themselves. After 24 hours on the road fleeing his homeland, a 58-year-old former security guard called Spartak had some questions of his own.

“Everyone is saying they care about us, but where are they?” he asked, sitting in the leafy garden of a hotel serving as an emergency shelter. “Where is France? Where is America? Where is Charles Michel?”

Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the `Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh is published Jan. 9, 2025, by Hurst and Oxford University Press.

https://www.politico.eu/article/charles-michel-nagorno-karabakh-minefield-explosion-azerbaijan-army/

[Yervant1]

MediaMax, Armenia
Jan 9 2025

Gabriel Gavin: The world did nothing as Nagorno-Karabakh’s entire population was forced to flee their homes


British publishing house Hurst Publishers has published journalist Gabriel Gavin’s book “Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

 

Gabriel Gavin is a journalist and writer from Oxford, England. He has covered the politics and foreign affairs of the former Soviet Union and Turkey as a reporter for Politico, as well as for outlets including Time, Foreign Policy and The Spectator.

 

Mediamax had an exclusive interview with Gabriel Gavin.

 

When you were covering what was happening in Nagorno-Karabakh, did you have in mind that someday it could become a book?

 

No, absolutely not. When I first arrived in March 2022, I had very little idea about Armenia. I first covered a flare-up of violence, and I had no idea about the conflict. It was something that I’d really only seen in the headlines from the 2020 war. And I quickly became quite obsessed with the conflict.

 

I remember driving down to Goris through the mountains; it’s one of the scenes I describe in the book. I had to hire a taxi driver because the ‘marshrutka’ was full. This guy was talking to me about life, and he said, ‘Why are you here’? I said, ‘I’m a journalist, I’m here to cover recent tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh’. And he was so delighted and happy to meet someone who was there to cover that side of the story, because he felt that the only hope the region had of avoiding another conflict was international attention. He reached into the glove compartment of the car and pulled out his military commission book. He showed me the stamp that he got when he was 18 years old and first went to the army. He showed me the stamp that he got when he volunteered in the 2020 war. And he showed me the space for future stamps as well. And it raised the prospect of yet more conflict. He pulled out his phone and was cycling through pictures of people he’d fought with who had died. And I remember thinking, ‘I know nothing about this’.

 

I don’t think anyone I know knows anything about this. There’s this bitter, raging conflict, burning away at the edge of Europe, and nobody seems particularly interested. And I think Azerbaijanis in particular have always been really frustrated that in the nineties there wasn’t very much international attention on the conflict then either.

 

I think some of the failure to arrive at a suitable settlement comes from the fact that there wasn’t enough attention paid. But unfortunately, I found myself bitterly disappointed in September last year when, despite the warnings, despite the public attention, the world did nothing as Nagorno-Karabakh’s entire population was forced to flee their homes. So, for me it was a very bitter experience.

 

And it’s something that I think about every day. There really should be a question as to why journalists do what they do, why politicians do what they do.

 

The text posted on the publisher’s website says you were working from both sides of the front line. So, you were working in Azerbaijan as well.

 

Yes, I was fortunate enough to travel to Azerbaijan several times over the course of my reporting and spent a couple of weeks there. I was able to visit territory taken in the 2020 war. When the mass exodus happened in September 2023, I spent about two weeks living in Goris, out on the border in Kornidzor, meeting people who’d fled, seeing people who I’d communicated with throughout the blockade, who had told me what they were eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner – sometimes nothing. I watched them come through; I saw these scenes unfold.

 

I saw the sorrow and the joy of families being reunited, the fear of what comes next and the reality of a historic and unique society being destroyed in real time. And then, within about two weeks, I was on a flight from Tbilisi to Baku. The guy at the airport checkpoint gets his stamp ready to let me in, and then he sees Armenian stamps in my passport and starts pressing a button on the table. No one comes, so he bangs on the glass, and his boss comes over and stands over his shoulder.

 

He shows him my Armenian stamps. And the boss looks up at me and asks, ‘Why did you go to Armenia?’ I said, ‘For work’. And I was thinking, this is quite a scary experience because I’ve just spent weeks and weeks covering in very blunt and accurate terms, what Azerbaijan had been doing during the blockade and then during the mass exodus. But they looked at each other, stamped my passport and let me through.

 

You said you were in Nagorno-Karabakh after the ethnic cleansing happened. I think you are one of the very few foreign reporters that were allowed to visit there. Can you please say more about that?

 

You see this enormous government effort to put money to change things, to build things, to show progress. But at the same time, it’s really rare that you see or meet an ordinary Azerbaijani who’s benefiting from that progress. I have sat down with people who returned to what Azerbaijan calls the liberated territories. I’ve met people who could remember down to the spot where their village was in the nineties. In some cases, they’ve been given new houses, but one of the things that I found was that it’s actually a kind of ‘Potemkin’ economy in many ways because while people get a house, it’s often not clear how and where they’re going to work.

 

I met a family on my most recent visit there who had been given a house in Lachin, and the man said, ‘Nobody helps us, I can’t work here’. These are the people who the Azerbaijani state says it is doing all this for. But they’re telling me that they don’t have enough food for groceries. So, how does that reflect the Azerbaijani state’s priorities?

 

I am sure you know that the societies both in Armenia and Azerbaijan are very sensitive about anything that is produced about the conflict – be it an article, a book, a documentary, etc. Have you prepared yourself for the mixed perception of your book?

 

I think in the case of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabakh, being an outsider was really helpful because it’s almost impossible for Armenians and Azerbaijanis to cover each other’s countries, even just to get access and deal with each other and hear each other’s stories. What I’ve always tried to do is to play that role of being a bridge, being able to see simultaneously two very different, very contradictory worlds. And I also really tried to come at it with a sense of humility.

 

One of the things I talk about in the book is the idea that if we report on this, if there’s coverage, then maybe the outcome won’t be violence and tragedy. And just realising that wasn’t going to be the case was something that shook me to my core and made me question what I do and why.

 

The other thing is that my general stance – the British media culture – is that I try and start from a position of contempt for all politicians, people who make decisions, people who stand up and say, well, it should be this way. I think my starting point is to question those people as seriously as possible about their motivations and their actions and the consequences of their actions.

 

If I have sympathies, it’s with the people who are affected by their decisions. It’s the ordinary people. It’s the Azerbaijani guy who lived in a village in the nineties and farmed his land and then had to pack up and flee, or it’s the young boy who died in 2020 because of government mismanagement and incompetence.

 

It’s about the people who had to pack all their possessions with a few hours’ notice, in some cases having lost sons, brothers, husbands in the fuel depot explosion during the mass exodus in September, and who then faced the decision to flee to Armenia, maybe with just a picture of them and not even their bodies. You know, it’s those stories that drive this book for me. Nobody is interested in what I think is right or wrong.

 

And that’s quite right. I wouldn’t ask for a moment that Azerbaijanis or Armenians look to my book or look to me for a solution to the conflict or for a question of justice in true journalistic style. All I’ve tried to do is present the facts, and people can decide for themselves.

 

I say in the introduction that I leave it to my readers to decide when an eye for an eye is justice and when it just results in collective blindness. I’ve also tried to avoid what’s often been a criticism among Armenians and Azerbaijanis of Western reporters who say, on the one hand the Karabakh Armenians say that they haven’t got anything to eat, on the other hand, there is this road from Aghdam, and you would never really help readers to understand why that’s the case.

 

Or, for example, I’ve interviewed the Azerbaijani ambassador in Brussels many times. I would talk about the blockade in Karabakh, and he’d say, well, what about the blockade in Nakhichevan? And there are plenty of journalists who will just report those two things and say that both sides say their territory is being blockaded. But it’s a dereliction of journalistic duty to report about people starving in Stepanakert, and not point out that that’s not the case in Nakhichevan. It’s not been the case in Nakhichevan for 30 years; it has air transport and road transport from Iran and Turkey.

 

I think one of the reasons that this region has been so badly served by reporters in recent years, is because it is such a complex issue, and people are really afraid to engage with it. One of the things that I saw a lot was that the instant reaction to anyone writing about the region was fury.

 

You know, I’ve seen journalists covering the most minor aspects of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, maybe a legal dispute or something like that. And they will be inundated with complaints and criticism. That’s in some ways understandable because it’s something that means so much to people involved in the conflict.

 

At the same time it makes it – I’m not making a judgement, I’m just saying objectively – a really intimidating thing for journalists and news outlets to cover. I’m sure that there are editors across the Western media who say, ‘Let’s not talk about it. Let’s not write about that. That’ll be a nightmare, you know. We will be attacked if we do this.’

 

And also, we don’t understand it well enough to be able to report on it. When you are writing a book – because I’ve also written some books – you always keep in your head the audience that you would like to reach, not necessarily one single audience, maybe a couple, to whom you would like to reach out with your book: people in the region, or people in the international community who were so inactive, who did nothing to help people.

 

I always say that the target audience for my reporting is my mom. It’s one of the things that motivated me to cover the region. I remember being in Goris reporting on some flare-up, or maybe it was the two-day war in 2022. I was messaging my mom, saying this is happening and this is happening. And she was like, well, it’s not on the news in England. And that was one of the things that motivated me to stay and work on the region. I didn’t feel that ordinary people who are bright, engaged, and interested had the information in front of them to be able to understand what was happening. And I think it’s important to understand what was happening.

 

I remember pitching the book when I was in a hotel room in Baku. I remember sitting with my notebooks of people’s stories, people’s testimonials, notes from the ground and little facts of what happened each day, and thinking no editor ever commissioned me to write a story about this. Politico has been fantastic in allowing me to cover the conflict as closely as I did, but the news cycle can’t allow a year writing stories about people who were affected by conflict, right? It’s never going to happen in the format of a news article. So, I felt that doing the book was the only way to make sure that that material, those stories saw the light of day.

 

And I felt a bit of a sense of obligation for the historical record to put something together in just the way I saw it. And I think my account is a bit like watching World War Two through a CCTV camera. You know you can only report on what you see in front of you. You know that it’ll never be the full picture. But what I’ve tried to do is to allow someone to imagine that they’ve spent the last three years covering the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and to see it through my eyes, and through the eyes of people that I’ve met who’ve shared their stories.

 

I think personally there’s never been more interest in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia’s genocidal war in Ukraine has rightly created attention about what’s happening elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. I think that officials and policymakers who want to understand what’s happening in this part of the world need to look to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to work out how power dynamics are changing; how Russia’s role is changing; how the fight for democracy and freedom is playing out. So, it should be of interest to everybody. The people who it will be of least interest to, I would say, are Armenians and Azerbaijanis because they tend to know their own stories. But then I think, well, they often don’t know each other’s stories. And this will be the most interesting focus for people from the region or further afield, in the US or elsewhere.

 

Fundamentally, I also wrote the book for me because it was a way of processing some of the things that I’d seen, and doing what I felt was my duty in presenting the biggest, holistic picture of the conflict, which isn’t always possible when you are writing a 300-word news story.

 

Would you like your book to be translated into Armenian and Azerbaijani?

 

I would love my book to be translated into Armenian and Azerbaijani. I think that would be fantastic. I’m not sure what the publisher’s plans are at the moment. I know that there is talk of some potential translation. That will be their decision. But it is really important that these things are discussed in languages that people speak.

 

I know far more Armenians and Azerbaijanis who don’t speak English than who do, and I think it’s a great opportunity for people to hear this. But again, I never wanted this book to be the definitive word on the conflict. What I’d actually love to see is more Armenians and Azerbaijanis producing their version of the conflict and producing more content.

 

We’ve seen very few books, certainly for an international audience, since the 2020 war, right? There hasn’t been that much on the Velvet Revolution or the Azerbaijani experience of what happened in the 1990s, and their forced exodus from Karabakh. What’s disappointing is that in Azerbaijan in particular, stuff gets discredited because it’s not organic; because it’s the government putting together a book of pictures of Aghdam or something, and we never hear genuine, unadulterated stories from people directly involved who reflect on their real perspectives on things. The people who’ve suffered from this conflict are Armenians and Azerbaijanis, and people continue to suffer, right? We are talking about Azerbaijani political prisoners. We are talking about Armenian refugees living in schools and barracks. There is so much shared experience here. And I think it’s a real shame that we rarely hear it in an organic way. It always comes with an agenda.

 

One of the things that I saw recently that makes me cry every time I watched the trailer – and I was lucky enough to watch the screening of it at the Golden Apricot Festival in Yerevan – was the documentary, ‘My Sweet Land’, which I thought was just a fantastic portrayal of one person’s perspective on the conflict as my book has tried to be a portrayal of people’s perceptions on the conflict. I’d love to see more like that.

 

I don’t think it’s possible for there to be an Azerbaijani ‘My Sweet Land’ at the moment because it requires criticism of the state in a way that I don’t think is possible at the moment. But I would love to see more Armenian and Azerbaijani accounts and testimonials and perceptions of what this war has done to their countries, to their societies, to their families.

 

Ara Tadevosyan talked to Gabriel Gavin

https://mediamax.am/en/news/interviews/56644/

[MosJan]

Ruben Vardanyan, former State Minister of Artsakh and Armenian political prisoner, has been unlawfully detained in Azerbaijan since September 27, 2023. Ahead of his January 17, 2025 trial, he issued a statement revealing severe legal and humanitarian violations against him and other Armenian prisoners.

For over 470 days, Vardanyan has endured 340 days in solitary confinement and 23 days in a punishment cell. Facing 42 charges, some carrying life imprisonment, he has been denied adequate resources to prepare his defense. His legal team had only a brief window to review 422 volumes of case files in Azerbaijani—a language he doesn’t understand. The charges were provided in Russian just nine days before the trial.

He reported procedural violations, including being coerced into signing falsified protocols. Vardanyan denies all charges, asserting his innocence and claiming documents bearing his signature are fabrications.

In his statement, he demands:

• Adequate time and resources for his defense in a language he understands.

• Exclusion of falsified documents and elimination of procedural violations.

• A fully public trial with international journalists and observers.

• Consolidation of his case with others, as their separation is unjustified.

Vardanyan calls on the global community to recognize the politically motivated nature of his trial and support justice for all Armenian political prisoners. Despite these injustices, he remains steadfast in his belief in truth, justice, and Artsakh’s right to self-determination.

He expressed deep gratitude for global support and continues to fight for transparency, human rights, and lasting peace.

 

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