Statue of a Dictator (Aliyev Clan)

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POLITICO

Oct 25 2023

Azerbaijan says peace with Armenia is within reach

Plans for a key road link through the region have been shelved, top officials say.

BY GABRIEL GAVIN

OCTOBER 25, 2023 12:35 PM CET

Top Azerbaijani officials have rejected claims a new conflict with Armenia is imminent, denying speculation the South Caucasus nation might use force to seize a strategically important transport corridor inside the neighboring country, insisting instead that a lasting peace deal could soon be signed.

Following talks with Russian counterparts on Tuesday, Azerbaijan’s foreign minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, said that “there are real chances for the conclusion of a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia within a short period of time” after Azerbaijan took control of the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh last month in a lightning war.

The proposed agreement would end three decades of conflict that has dragged in global powers like Russia, the EU and U.S. — while flying in the face of speculation Azerbaijan could use military force to secure the so-called Zangezur Corridor, an as-yet unrealized road and rail link between mainland Azerbaijan and its exclave, Nakhchivan.

Speaking to POLITICO, Hikmet Hajiyev, the top foreign policy aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, said his country had no plans to seize Zangezur — known to Armenians as Syunik — after the two sides failed to agree on its opening. The project, he said, “has lost its attractiveness for us — we can do this with Iran instead.”

“Our agenda was only about building transport linkages and connectivity through the framework of bilateral engagement,” said Hajiyev. “If this is the case, yes, but if not then OK. It’s still on the table but it will require from the Armenian side to show they’re really interested in that.”

Earlier this month, as part of an agreement with Tehran, Azerbaijan broke ground on a new road link via the neighboring country. However, there are hopes that a transport link could be revived as part of progress on the peace treaty, but without “extraterritorial” concessions that would allow Azerbaijan to bypass Armenian border control. The borders are currently closed.

“The Armenian position has always been clear on unblocking regional communications,” said Ani Badalyan, the Armenian foreign ministry spokesperson. “It must be based on sovereignty and jurisdiction of states and principles of reciprocity and equality.” Armenian officials declined to comment on the progress of peace talks, brokered at different times over the past few months by the U.S., EU, Russia and Iran.

However, Armenia’s incoming ambassador to the EU, Tigran Balayan, has claimed that his government expects an invasion “within weeks.”

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azerbaijanis were forcibly displaced by Armenian forces in a war following the fall of the Soviet Union, many from villages inside Southern Armenia. Aliyev has called for them to be allowed to go home, while saying last week “we will return to Zangezur, but in a peaceful way … not in tanks, but in cars.”

In a statement following the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh in September, in which tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians fled their homes in the wake of Azerbaijan’s military offensive, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was “deeply concerned by Azerbaijan’s military actions” and insisted that “the use of force to resolve disputes is unacceptable.” Inside Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders, the battle-scarred territory had been held by its ethnic Armenian population for the past three decades.

Earlier this month, Blinken held a call with American lawmakers to discuss the conflict. Two people familiar with the conversation told POLITICO that the top diplomat said Washington was tracking the possibility of a conflict inside Armenia’s borders, while the State Department declined to comment. Spokesman Matthew Miller reportedly disputed the claims several days later in comments to local media, but officials have since refused to confirm or clarify a position on the issue.

France has announced it will provide weapons to Armenia to defend its sovereignty — a decision that Aliyev says will make Paris culpable in the event of further violence.

However, the EU’s role as a mediator in the conflict now appears to be under threat, with talks in Brussels that had been scheduled for this month being postponed, days after negotiations on a peace deal in Iran, attended by Russia. A senior EU official who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues insisted, however, that the bloc isn’t losing its influence — but that things are simply taking longer to organize.

https://www.politico.eu/article/peace-armenia-reach-azerbaijan-foreign-minister-jeyhun-bayramov/

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THE WEEK

Oct 25 2023

Why fears of another war between Armenia and Azerbaijan are growing

After seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh region, further conflict between bitter enemies could draw in Turkey, Russia, France and Iran

BY HARRIET MARSDEN, THE WEEK UK

PUBLISHED 4 HOURS AGO

Fears are growing that Azerbaijan could follow its seizure of the Nagorno-Karabakh region with fresh assaults on Armenian territory, drawing Turkey, Iran and Russia into the conflict.

Azerbaijan has "kicked off major military exercises" in the region, reported Politico, with Azerbaijani troops training alongside Turkish troops on the border with Iran.

France, the country with Europe's largest Armenian community, has announced that it will sell military equipment to Armenia. Paris "started stepping up defence cooperation with Yerevan", Armenia's capital, last September, but Azerbaijan's recent "lightning military offensive" has "accelerated France's willingness to deepen military ties", said the website.

The US is reportedly "tracking the possibility of a full-blown invasion of Armenia", said Politico – although Azerbaijan has denied such plans. But another move by Azerbaijani forces "could inflame a broader conflict in the Southern Caucasus", where Turkey, Russia and Iran "all have core strategic interests".

And with the world's eyes on the Israel-Hamas conflict, "experts believe that sovereign Armenia is the next Turkish-Azerbaijani target", said Time, with the "conspicuous arrival" of Turkish F-16 fighter jets in Azerbaijan. Last time such a military exercise took place in 2020, it "preceded the 44-day war against Armenia-backed Nagorno-Karabakh, preparing ground for last month's 'final solution'".

What is the context?

The Armenian and Azerbaijani governments have been "locked in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh for decades", said RadioFreeEurope. Armenian-backed separatists "seized the mainly ethnic-Armenian-populated region" from Azerbaijan during a war in the early 1990s.

For decades, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev "united the country around the trauma" of losing the secession war to ethnic Armenians, said the Financial Times. Aliyev "built his personal legitimacy around the battle to retake Karabakh", reported the FT's Polina Ivanova from the capital, Baku.

The two sides fought another war in 2020 (the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War) for six weeks, before a Russian-brokered ceasefire, and then a peace agreement in 2022, when Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accepted some of the Karabakh region as Azerbaijani territory.

But Azerbaijan began to blockade the area in December last year, "effectively cutting ethnic Armenians off from the outside world", said Al Jazeera. In recent years, Aliyev began to refer to Armenia as "western Azerbaijan", and has been calling for the creation of the "Zangezur Corridor", a highway linking Azerbaijan with Nakhichevan, running along Armenia's border with Iran.

What's the latest?

Last month Azerbaijan "dealt a crushing blow to its long-time enemy", said the FT's Ivanova, taking control over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in a "blitz offensive". But rather than "heralding a new era of peace", Azerbaijan's rhetoric "has neighbouring Armenia fearful that its ambitions may be bigger, and the conflict not over yet".

Russian, Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers met with their Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts in Tehran this month, discussing how to avoid further conflict between the two countries.

But Armenia is "the lowest-hanging fruit for Turkey's leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is desperate for a show of power", said Simon Maghakyan for Time. A successful invasion of Armenia "would realise the Armenian Genocide-era goal of connecting Azerbaijan and Turkey continuously".

Russia's Vladimir Putin also "stands to gain from an invasion". Putin has made it clear that "the democratically elected Armenian government must be punished for its pro-Western flings", including the recent move to finalise its International Criminal Court membership. This month, "a top Russian official referred to Armenia as the next Ukraine."

What next?

"The fact Armenia is investing so much of the budget into defence and defence procurement shows how seriously it's taking the threats," a defence analyst with Armenia's Applied Policy Research Institute told Politico. "Over a year, it has virtually doubled."

Aliyev accused France of intending to "inflate a new conflict" by providing weapons to Armenia, said the news site. He also skipped EU-mediated peace talks at the last minute. But French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu pointed out that the weapons systems being sold to Armenia "can only be deployed in the event of aggression on Armenian territory".

A government adviser insists Azerbaijan has no "military goals on the territory of Armenia", said the FT. With Karabakh returned, he said, "Azerbaijan is complete." However, said the paper, "such promises to respect Armenia's territorial integrity have been made in the past, only to be undermined".

"If there are no further military aims," a Western diplomat asked, "why are we having such difficulties getting the leaders together?… If you're saying you're committed to peace, please sign on the dotted line."

https://theweek.com/defence/why-fears-of-another-war-between-armenia-and-azerbaijan-are-growing

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BARRON'S

Oct 25 2023

• FROM AFP NEWS

Canada Urges Azerbaijan To Respect Armenia Sovereignty

Canada's foreign minister Melanie Joly called on Azerbaijan to "respect" Armenia's borders on a visit to Yerevan Wednesday, a month after Baku took control of Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning offensive.

Tensions are high between the Caucasus foes after the speedy military campaign, which led to an exodus of Karabakh's ethnic Armenian population.

Yerevan fears energy-rich Baku may seek -- with Turkish help -- to forcibly connect its Nakhichevan exclave with Azerbaijan proper by capturing lands in southern Armenia, along the Iranian border.

Joly urged Azerbaijan to "respect Armenia's territorial integrity", during a press conference with her Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan.

"Canada continues to call on the Azerbaijani government to respect the right of Armenians to return to Nagorno-Karabakh," she added.

Almost all of Karabakh's ethnic Armenian population -- some 100,000 people -- fled for Armenia after Baku's lightning offensive, sparking a refugee crisis.

Baku has vowed to ensure the rights of Karabakh's Armenians are protected and denied having any territorial claims to Armenia.

But Yerevan has accused it of "ethnic cleansing".

Joly announced the opening of a Canadian embassy in Yerevan, during the first ever visit of a Canadian foreign minister to the landlocked Caucasus country.

Karabakh, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan and home to a majority Armenian population, was at the centre of two wars between Yerevan and Baku -- in 2020 and in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Internationally mediated peace talks between the ex-Soviet republics have so far failed to produce a breakthrough.

https://www.barrons.com/news/canada-urges-azerbaijan-to-respect-armenia-sovereignty-ad764904

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Reuters

Oct 25 2023

Azerbaijan drops Armenian land corridor plan, looks to Iran - Aliyev adviser

Reuters

Oct 25 (Reuters) - Azerbaijan is no longer interested in securing a land corridor through Armenia to the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhichevan and will instead discuss the issue with its southern neighbour Iran, a senior Azerbaijani official said on Wednesday.

Routing a potential corridor through Iran, which borders both Armenia and Azerbaijan, could help reduce tensions around southern Armenia, which Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has in the past referred to as historically Azeri land.

"Azerbaijan had no plans to seize Zangezur," Hikmet Hajiyev, a top foreign policy adviser to Iliyev, told Reuters, referring to the putative corridor that would link Azerbaijan proper to its enclave of Nakhichevan bordering Turkey, Baku's close ally.

"After the two sides failed to agree on its opening, the project has lost its attractiveness for us — we can do this with Iran instead," he said.

Armenia had opposed such a corridor, fearing having to make further territorial concessions after Azerbaijan seized the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning offensive in September.

Although internationally viewed as Azeri territory, Karabakh had been controlled by ethnic Armenians since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. The Azeri offensive prompted almost all the region's 120,000 ethnic Armenians to flee into Armenia.

Azerbaijan had in recent weeks called for its longstanding request for a transport corridor through southern Armenia to be included in ongoing talks on a peace treaty aimed at ending three decades of conflict between Baku and Yerevan.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/armenia-says-pashinyan-aliyev-talks-cancelled-after-baku-pulled-out-tass-2023-10-25/

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https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.dailywire.com/news/they-hate-us-so-much-worlds-oldest-christian-__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!sfOtm3yW5g6udyweh2Ge7TnKNq5frSYxT9enTnrv_UGixKEz9ZU78507ZxRxSqupKKxYlInhBjZzMZJcDg$

nation-faces-ethnic-cleansing-as-emboldened-azerbaijan-wages-a-silent-war

'They Hate Us So Much': World's Oldest Christian Nation Faces Ethnic
Cleansing As Emboldened Azerbaijan Wages A Silent War
By Michael Whittaker and Zach Jewell
.
Oct 25, 2023 DailyWire.com
.
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09/26/2023 Kornidzor, Armenia. Refugees from Nagorno- Karabakh passing
through Kornidzor reunite and embrace one another in both happiness and
sadness. The days continue to be filled with uncertainty and emotion.
Anthony Pizzoferrato / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP
While war and atrocity dominate headlines around the world, a largely
overlooked conflict in the Caucuses has escalated to ethnic cleansing of the
Christian population from the oldest Christian nation in the world.

For fear of their lives, more than 100,000 Armenians have been forced to
flee their ancestral home in Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan seized total
control over the region in September. The 1,700-square-mile mountainous
slice of land has been inhabited by Armenians for thousands of years, but it
is surrounded by Azerbaijan, a majority Muslim nation that says the region
is its territory.

Though the fight is over territory, experts say that at its core, the
conflict stems from ethnic and religious differences between Armenians and
Azerbaijanis.

"Ethnicity and religion are intertwined. Azerbaijanis may say they do not
hate Christians But, when it comes to Armenians - the indigenous population
in the region - the Azerbaijanis show no tolerance," explained Dr. Michael
Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and expert on
the region. "Azerbaijanis recognize deep down that had it not been for
Joseph Stalin, they would have no claim whatsoever to Nagorno-Karabakh. The
Azerbaijanis realize they have no legitimacy and so target with special
animus those who do."

Yana Avanesyan, a doctoral researcher who is originally from
Nagorno-Karabakh, says the religious difference between the two countries
plays a major role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.


"When we say Armenians, we are speaking about us being Christians,"
Avanesyan told The Daily Wire. "We know they hate us so much that they will
just destroy everything."

Many refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh are sick and malnourished - Azerbaijan's
military began blockading the region in December of last year, cutting off
access to food, electricity and water from the outside. Some are also
exhausted after fleeing into Armenia on foot - and Armenia has expressed
concern that it may not have the resources to care for such a massive influx
of people.

Her family was among the more than 100,000 who fled the region without a
place to go. The estimated population of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh is
roughly 120,000, meaning nearly the entire population have decided to flee.


"War started in Nagorno-Karabakh, and people were forced to flee, and more
than 100,000 people - including my entire family, my parents, my sister, my
grandma - they were forced to flee their homes," Avanesyan said. She was
finally reunited with her family around a month ago, but they are now
struggling to find a place to live after being uprooted from their home.

"There are not enough resources in Armenia and people try to solve their
issues by themselves. So we are trying to find apartments or houses for me,
my family, and my relatives," said Avanesyan. "I'm currently trying to find
an apartment for my family before we will know what's going on because the
situation now is very uncertain."

"No one from the displaced people knows what is going to happen to us," she
said.

Ethnolinguistic distribution in The Caucasus Region in 2007 via Wikimedia
Commons

Armenia has existed in some form or another for nearly three millennia, and
became the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion in 310
AD. While it has historically been in the political orbit of Russia, since
2018 it has made significant anti-corruption and pro-democracy reforms, and
has been distancing itself from Moscow. It is currently home to about 2.7
million people.

Azerbaijan traces its roots back to the Old Azeris, who were conquered by
and intermarried with the Seljuk and later the Mongol Turks between the 11th
and 13th centuries. It is predominantly Shia Muslim, although its culture is
comparatively secular. Despite its historic and ethnic ties to Iran (more
ethnic Azeris live in Iran than Azerbaijan) it is most closely aligned in
global politics with Turkey. While it is nominally a republic, it is in fact
an authoritarian state controlled by de facto dictator Ilham Aliyev, who was
preceded by his father, Heydar Aliyev. It is home to 10.3 million people.

Azerbaijan's claim to Nagorno-Karabakh, as explained by Rubin, can be traced
to Stalin and the Soviet Union, which absorbed both nations.

The Soviets nominally advocated for a universal communist model that would
transcend ethnicity and language barriers, but in practice, they often found
it prudent to administer regions and subregions based on ethnic divides -
the Socialist Republic of Armenia and the Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan
were both members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the
Armenian-majority region of Nagorno-Karabakh was given autonomous status
within Azerbaijan.

In the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union began to collapse, the people of
Nagorno-Karabakh petitioned to leave Azerbaijan and unify with Armenia - but
Azerbaijan refused. What started as a political dispute became a military
dispute between the newly independent nations in 1992, in which tens of
thousands of people were killed and hundreds of thousands of ethnic
minorities in both nations were expelled from their homes.

In the aftermath of the 1994 ceasefire, the 'Republic of Artsakh' was
allowed to exist as a de facto independent state within Azerbaijan, though
no other nation, including Armenia, formally recognized its independence.
The uneasy truce persisted for decades in what was widely regarded as a
"frozen conflict."

But that conflict rethawed in 2020 after years of border clashes, and ended
with Azerbaijan seizing large portions of the Republic of Artsakh. Russia
stepped in to negotiate a truce, and sent peacekeepers into Artsakh, as well
as the Tachin Corridor (the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to the
outside world) to ensure the continued independence of the region.

The situation changed in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. As the
war dragged on, it became clear that Russia was bogged down and could not
commit its forces to another theater, and the Russian peacekeepers who
remained in the region did not intervene when Azerbaijan blockaded the
Tachin Corridor and cut Nagorno-Karabakh off from the outside world.

"We cannot tolerate any longer having such armed forces on our territory and
also a structure which, on a daily basis, challenges the security and
sovereignty of Azerbaijan," said Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to
President Aliyev.

A coalition of global organizations called 120,000 Reasons launched a
campaign in September that seeks to end the Azerbaijan blockade on
Nagorno-Karabakh, and bring attention to what it says is an attempted
genocide of the region's entire Armenian population.

Gev Iskayjan, a resident of Nagorno-Karabakh who recently fled to Armenia,
told 120,000 Reasons that "over 99% of the ethnic population of Artsakh has
left the area.

"That land that we were on, that Armenians lived on for thousands of years,
now, only a handful remain," Iskayjan said.

Timeline of the flight of the ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh via
Wikimedia Commons

Azerbaijan has denied claims that it is pursuing genocide or forcing
Armenians out. Its claims were undermined after it captured Stepanakert, the
capital of the region, when it renamed one of the city's streets in honor of
Enver *****, a military officer for the Ottoman Empire who is known as the
architect of the last Armenian genocide, which killed more than a million
people in the 1900s.

That sent a clear signal to the city's Armenian population.

"Azerbaijan did not order any Armenians to leave," Amberin Zaman wrote from
Armenia for Al-Monitor. "Yet it ensured that life was so miserable that few
would opt to stay. Indeed, even as Azerbaijani authorities rebuffed claims
of ethnic cleansing, insisting their forces had struck 'legitimate military
targets,' eyewitness accounts of rape and indiscriminate shelling that
wounded and killed children began to emerge."

Various Western nations, including the United States, condemned Azerbaijan,
and as recently as last month senior U.S. officials said they would not
tolerate any action against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. But in the
aftermath of the invasion and dissolution of the Republic of Artsakh there
has been no meaningful response. Even Armenia stayed out of the conflict, to
the outrage of many of its citizens.

"It is amazing that an ethnic cleansing happened in the 21st century and
there is absolutely no reaction from the international community," political
analyst Tigran Grigoryan told NPR. "If this happened somewhere in Europe, I
believe [the Azerbaijani leadership] would already be on international
wanted lists."

Iskayjan told reporters that while he and many other Armenians feel
"betrayed" by the international community, the incident raises broader
questions about the influence of the United States and its allies overseas.

"Policymakers in the United States have to ask themselves, Does our word
mean anything?" he said. "If a state actor like Azerbaijan can, at any time,
willingly disregard what we say, what does that say about the strength of
our State Department and the strength of our foreign policy?"

It's possible that Azerbaijan believes it has too much leverage to be cowed
by Western condemnation - the country is rich in natural gas, and since
trade sanctions against Russia have cut Europe off from Russian energy
exports, Azerbaijan has stepped in to cover some of the shortfall, with
tentative plans to double its gas exports to Europe.

Now that Azerbaijan has secured Nagorno-Karabakh, many observers fear that
an emboldened Azerbaijan could push into Armenia proper to seize control of
the strategic Zangezur corridor, which would create a direct land route from
the Caspian Sea to its close ally, Turkey. Armenia had promised Azerbaijan
access to trade throughout the territory as part of the 2020 truce but has
since walked back that promise, arguing that Azerbaijan's presence in the
area would effectively mean military occupation.

It's unclear how other global or regional powers would respond to such an
invasion, given the muted response thus far to the seizure of
Nagorno-Karabakh. The escalated conflict could produce strange bedfellows,
according to foreign policy analysts.

Russia could pivot into Azerbaijan's camp out of a simple desire to side
with the stronger party and minimize its own involvement. Turkey, formally a
U.S. ally, is very close to Azerbaijan, and Israel has a strategic
partnership with the Azerbaijanis based on their mutual enmity with Iran.
India, meanwhile, has been strengthening its ties with Armenia, while Iran
is also backing the Christian nation against its regional rivals.

It's also possible that Armenia could pivot further into the Western camp
now that it no longer sees Russia as a reliable protector.

Former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for international religious freedom, Sam
Brownback, has called for greater U.S. support to Armenia and blasted the
Biden administration for sending U.S. aid and weapons to Azerbaijan. He also
expressed concern that the mass exodus was part of a broader pattern of
anti-Christian discrimination around the world.

"We're seeing another ancient Christian population being run out of the
region," Brownback said. "Most of the Middle East and North Africa, the
Christians have all been run out."

Read more in:
Armenians,Christian,Europe,Foreign Policy,Religion

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First post

Oct 26 2023

Is Azerbaijan carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh?

Azerbaijan in September recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning offensive after months of blockade by its military. Yerevan has accused Baku of ethnic cleansing after more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled the region, sparking a refugee crisis

On Thursday, Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan said he hoped to sign a peace agreement with Azerbaijan soon.

The development comes two months after Azerbaijan recaptured the Nagorno-Karabakh region in a swift offensive.

“We are currently working on the draft agreement with Azerbaijan on peace and the normalisation of relations, and I hope this process will successfully conclude in the coming months,” Pashinyan added.

On Wednesday, Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy condemned Azerbaijan over its actions in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Nagorno-Karabakh been ethnically and religiously Armenian Christian for a long time, and has largely been viewed as an autonomous region governed separately,” Ramaswamy said.

But what is Nagorno-Karabakh? And what do we know about Armenia’s actions in the region?

Let’s take a closer look

What happened in Nagorno-Karabakh?

Nagorno-Karabakh, known to Armenians as Artsakh, is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani territory.

It became a breakaway state under the control of ethnic Armenian forces in 1994 following a six-year conflict.

After a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan took back parts of the region in the South Caucasus Mountains – along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had captured earlier.

Then, last month, Azerbaijan launched an offensive that forced separatists to relinquish the rest of the region and brought the entire ethnic Armenian enclave back under its control.

The 24-hour campaign which began on 19 September witnessed Azerbaijani army routing the region’s undermanned and outgunned Armenian forces, forcing them to capitulate.

Though Azerbaijan had vowed to respect the rights of the territory’s Armenian community, over 100,000 ethnic Armenians – more than 80 per cent of the region’s residents – have since fled the region and sparked a refugee crisis.

The ethnic Armenians fear reprisals or losing the freedom to practice their religion and customs.

Armenia has now accused Azerbaijan of “ethnic cleansing”.

Ethnic Armenians had faced months of blockade of the territory by Azerbaijan’s military.

As per the Washington Post, ethnic Armenians witnessed the shelves of their grocery stores grow bare and hospitals go without medical supplies during the blockade.

French-Armenian journalist Astrig Agopian told NBC News, “Many of them are from villages which were taken by the Azerbaijani army, so they really lost their homes already.”

“There is really this feeling that this time is different. It’s another war, but it’s a war that is definitely lost this time,” Agopian reporting from the Armenian border added.

Narine Shakaryan, a grandmother of four, told Reuters, “My husband died in the first war. He was 30, I was 26. Our children were 3 and 4 years old. It is the fourth war that I went through.”

“My husband died back then, he was 30 in 1994. That’s the cursed life that we live.”

“I gave my whole life to my homeland,” one man told BBC. “It would be better if they killed me than this.”

A woman, Veronica, added this was the second time she had become a refugee – after the 2020 conflict.

“Our people do not want to live as part of Azerbaijan. Ninety-nine point nine percent prefer to leave our historic lands,” David Babayan, an adviser to Samvel Shahramanyan, the president of the self-styled Republic of Artsakh, told Reuters.

“The fate of our poor people will go down in history as a disgrace and a shame for the Armenian people and for the whole civilized world.”

“Those responsible for our fate will one day have to answer before God for their sins.”

Pashinyan on Sunday said, “If proper conditions are not created for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to live in their homes and there are no effective protection mechanisms against ethnic cleansing, the likelihood is rising that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will see exile from their homeland as the only way to save their lives and identity.”

But Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev’s office has claimed that the country has presented a plan for the “reintegration” of ethnic Armenians in the region, noting that “the equality of rights and freedoms, including security, is guaranteed to everyone regardless of their ethnic, religious or linguistic affiliation.”

Aliyev blamed the Armenians’ exodus from the region on separatist authorities that encouraged them to leave.

The Azerbaijani leader said that Azerbaijani authorities had provided humanitarian assistance to the Armenian residents of Karabakh and “the process of their registration had started.”

What do experts say?

A piece in CFR stated that it has been reported that more than 400 ethnic Armenians including civilians were killed in clashes with the Azerbaijan army.

The piece noted that the Untied Nations terms ethnic cleansing as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”

Luis Moreno Ocampo, an ex-prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, has accused Azerbaijan of imposing “genocide” conditions on Nagorno-Karabakh.

Ocampo in a Washington Post op-ed wrote that Azerbaijan’s ambitions “extend beyond” the region.

“Azerbaijan is an ally with the West against Iran; it provides energy to Europe and it spends millions on sophisticated Israeli weapons,” he wrote. “But such exigencies must not get in the way of the world’s responsibility to stop what is happening before its very eyes: the Armenian genocide of 2023.”

A piece in The Conversation noted, “It was always highly unlikely that any Armenians would “choose” to stay under Azeri control of Nagorno-Karabakh. The regime of President Ilham Aliyev does not tolerate criticism or plurality of voice among its own citizens.”

The article, noting how the think-tank Freedom House designated Azerbaijan a “consolidated authoritarian regime”, stated that Baku’s vow ‘to protect the rights and safety of ethnic Armenians’ rings hollow.

“For decades, the Aliyev regime has promoted ethnic hatred of Armenians. Azerbaijan has actively worked for the eradication and appropriation of its Armenian religious and cultural heritage. This was referred to in a recent report as “the worst cultural genocide of the 21st Century”.

The piece also noted that the crimes committed by Azerbaijan’s troops during the 2020 conflict were extremely well documented.

“The so-called “Military Trophies Park” in the Azeri capital of Baku, built as a memorial of the war, is filled with grotesque mannequins representing Armenians.”

Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow with the London-based Carnegie Europe think-tank told NBC News, “Azerbaijan has won a comprehensive military victory and what we’re looking at now is the prospect of Nagorno-Karabakh without Armenians or with very few Armenians remaining.”

“So in that sense, Azerbaijan has won.”

Skepticism over Western intervention

Pashinyan said Armenia was ready “to open, reopen, rebuild, build all regional communications” if its sovereignty over the area is not questioned.

Baku has vowed to ensure the rights of Karabakh’s Armenians are protected.

It has denied having any territorial claims to Armenia, saying it could set up a land link with Nakhichevan via Iran instead of Armenia.

Pashinyan also said Thursday that he hoped the border between Armenia and Turkey could be opened for citizens of third countries and diplomats “in the near future”.

Ankara closed its border with Armenia in the 1990s in solidarity with ally Azerbaijan.

With the traditional regional power broker Russia bogged down in its Ukraine war, the European Union and United States have taken a lead role in brokering an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.

Aliyev has recently expressed scepticism about Western mediation efforts.

Citing France’s “biased position,” he refused to attend another round of peace talks with Pashinyan in Spain earlier in October.

They had been due to take place under the mediation of the EU chief Charles Michel, French president Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Aliyev said peace talks with Yerevan could be held in Georgia “if Yerevan agrees”, but Pashinyan – who is keen on Western mediation – rejected the idea.

On Monday, Iran and Russia denounced Western “interference” in tensions between Yerevan and Baku at a foreign ministers’ meeting in Tehran that also included top diplomats from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.

Armenians stunned, say ‘historic blow’

While the separatist ethnic Armenian government in Nagorno-Karabakh then announced that it was dissolving and that the unrecognized republic will cease to exist by year’s end – a seeming death knell for its 30-year de-facto independence – but Azerbaijani authorities are already in charge of the region.

The swift fall of the Armenian-majority enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani troops and exodus of much of its population has stunned the large Armenian diaspora around the world.

Traumatized by genocide a century ago, they now fear the erasure of what they consider a central and beloved part of their historic homeland.

Many in Armenia and the diaspora fear a centuries-long community in the territory they call Artsakh will disappear in what they call a new wave of ethnic cleansing.

They accuse European countries, Russia and the United States – and the government of Armenia itself – of failing to protect ethnic Armenians during months of blockade of the territory by Azerbaijan’s military.

Outside the modern country of Armenia itself, the mountainous land was one of the only surviving parts of a heartland that centuries ago stretched across what is now eastern Turkey, into the Caucasus region and western Iran.

Many in the diaspora had pinned dreams on it gaining independence or being joined to Armenia.

Nagorno-Karabakh was “a page of hope in Armenian history,” Narod Seroujian, a Lebanese-Armenian university instructor in Beirut, said Thursday.

“It showed us that there is hope to gain back a land that is rightfully ours … For the diaspora, Nagorno-Karabakh was already part of Armenia.”

Ethnic Armenians have communities around Europe and West Asia and in the United States.

Lebanon is home to one of the largest, with an estimated 120,000 of Armenian origin, four per cent of the population.

Most are descendants of those who fled the 1915 campaign by Ottoman Turks in which some 1.5 million Armenians died in massacres, deportations and forced marches.

The atrocities, which emptied many ethnic Armenian areas in eastern Turkey, are widely viewed by historians as genocide.

Turkey rejects the description of genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest during World War I.

In Bourj Hammoud, the main Armenian district in the capital Beirut, memories are still raw, with anti-Turkey graffiti common on the walls. The red-blue-and-orange Armenian flag flies from many buildings.

“This is the last migration for Armenians,” said Harout Bshidikian, 55, sitting in front of an Armenian flag in a Bourj Hamoud cafe. “There is no other place left for us to migrate from.”

Azerbaijan says it is reuniting its territory, pointing out that even Armenia’s prime minister recognized that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan.

Though its population has been predominantly ethnic Armenian Christians, Turkish Muslim Azeris also have communities and cultural ties to the territory as well, particularly the city of Shusha, famed as a cradle of Azeri poetry.

Wall said Nagorno-Karabakh had become “a kind of new cause” for an Armenian diaspora whose forebearers had suffered the genocide.

“It was a kind of new Armenian state, new Armenian land being born, which they projected lots of hopes on. Very unrealistic hopes, I would say,” he said, adding that it encouraged Karabakh Armenians to hold out against Azerbaijan despite the lack of international recognition for their separatist government.

Armenians see the territory as a cradle of their culture, with monasteries dating back more than a millennium.

“Artsakh or Nagorno-Karabakh has been a land for Armenians for hundreds of years,” said Lebanese legislator Hagop Pakradounian, head of Lebanon’s largest Armenian group, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. “The people of Artsakh are being subjected to a new genocide, the first genocide in the 21st Century.”

The fall of Nagorno-Karabakh is not just a reminder of the genocide, “it’s reliving it,” said Diran Guiliguian, an Armenian activist who is based in Madrid but holds Armenian, Lebanese and French citizenship.

He said his grandmother used to tell him stories of how she fled in 1915. The genocide “is actually not a thing of the past. It’s not a thing that is a century old. It’s actually still the case,” he said.

Seroujian, the instructor in Beirut, said her great-grandparents were genocide survivors, and that stories of the atrocities and dispersal were talked about at home, school and in the community as she grew up, as was the cause of Nagorno-Karabakh.

She visited the territory several times, most recently in 2017. “We’ve grown with these ideas, whether they were romantic or not, of the country. We’ve grown to love it even when we didn’t see it,” she said. “I never thought about it as something separate” from Armenia the country.

In the United States, the Armenian community in the Los Angeles area – one of the world’s largest – has staged several protests trying to draw attention to the situation. On Sept. 19, they used a trailer truck to block a major freeway for several hours, causing major traffic jams.

Kim Kardashian, perhaps the most well-known Armenian-American today, went on social media to urge President Joe Biden “to Stop Another Armenian Genocide.”

Several groups in the diaspora are collecting money for Karabakh Armenians fleeing their home. But Seroujian said many feel helpless.

“There are moments where personally, the family, or among friends we just feel hopeless,” she said. “And when we talk to each other we sort of lose our minds.

With inputs from agencies

https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/is-azerbaijan-carrying-out-ethnic-cleansing-of-armenians-in-nagorno-karabakh-13302492.html

[Yervant1]

Oct 30 2023

Ending US military assistance to Azerbaijan immediately:

Washington was giving Baku transfer waivers for years to fight terrorism after 9/11. That's no longer necessary, especially now.

ANALYSIS | EUROPE

ALEX LITTLE

OCT 30, 2023

The 35-year-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed enclave wedged between the two countries, appears to have been settled in Azerbaijan’s favor as President Ilham Aliyev raised the country’s flag over the region’s former de facto capital.

While officials in Azerbaijan celebrated a political victory after conducting an “anti-terrorist operation” on September 19 against Karabakh Armenian military units, more than 100,000 Armenians have since been forced to leave their homes for the neighboring Republic of Armenia.

Baku’s actions and threats thus far should be reason enough for Washington to end the military assistance it has provided Azerbaijan over previous decades. In fact, it should have ended assistance years ago.

During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, Washington committed to prohibiting aid to Azerbaijan through Section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act. However, following Azerbaijan’s pledge to cooperate with President George W. Bush’s global war on terrorism following the attacks on 9/11, Congress approved a process to waive Section 907 in 2002; this has occurred each year since. From 2002 to 2020, the Departments of State and Defense (DOD) reported providing about $164 million for security assistance to the government of Azerbaijan.

All waivers of Section 907 should have ended in 2020 as Azerbaijan initiated the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Weapons, potentially those sent by Washington, are being used by Azerbaijan to satiate its territorial aspirations, not the intended purpose of supporting U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

Azerbaijan also explicitly violated the condition of the waiver requiring that Baku “will not undermine or hamper ongoing efforts to negotiate a peaceful settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan or be used for offensive purposes against Armenia.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly stated that the U.S. State Department will not renew a long-standing waiver for military assistance. Secretary Blinken’s statement was likely the result of lawmakers who have pushed for ending this military assistance, such as Senators Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and others who have sponsored the Armenian Protection Act of 2023. This bill would effectively repeal the Section 907 waiver. Adopting such a bill would be a positive development, as Azerbaijan considers further aggression against Armenia’s internationally recognized territory.

Domestic rhetoric by Aliyev is most important in understanding the potential of Azerbaijani foreign policy ambitions. President Aliyev has previously threatened to use force to establish a “corridor” through southern Armenia connecting mainland Azerbaijan with the Autonomous Nakhchivan Republic. "The Zangezur Corridor is a historical necessity," Aliyev said in January 2023, "It will happen whether Armenia wants it or not.”

Azerbaijan and Turkey are particularly interested in linking this route with the already expansive “Middle Corridor” to directly connect the two countries rather than the current path through Georgia.

Days after the offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh, Aliyev held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Nakhchivan regarding the Zangezur Corridor, hinting at creating a land bridge between their two countries through Armenia. If Azerbaijan (and, by extension, Turkey) established a link by force across Armenia’s territory, it would clearly violate Armenian sovereignty and territorial integrity, the exact tenets that Brussels and Washington have sought to defend in Ukraine and uphold through the so-called rules-based order.

For Armenia, such a development would deprive it of a land border with Iran, one of its key regional allies and trading partners.

As such, Armenia is vehemently opposed to the idea of a corridor through its territory that is not under its direct jurisdiction. Article 9 of the 2020 ceasefire statement includes a provision committing Armenia to "guarantee the security" of transportation connections between Azerbaijan's mainland and Nakhchivan. However, both sides have accused each other of violating this agreement.

Additionally, the stipulation that “control over transport communication is carried out by the bodies of the Border Guard Service of the FSB of Russia” appears unlikely as Moscow did not do much of anything to stop clashes over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2022 or Azerbaijan’s offensive in September 2023. As a result, Armenians have lost significant trust in Moscow’s ability to provide security to Armenia despite being a mutual security partner in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

Iran also has qualms with the prospect of Azerbaijan and Turkey occupying Armenian territory and creating the Zangezur Corridor by force. Tehran has said that it opposes “geopolitical” changes in the South Caucasus. Specifically, Iran is deeply concerned about Israeli influence in Azerbaijan. Baku received high-tech drones and other weapons from Israel, which after Russia, was the second-largest arms supplier to Azerbaijan from 2011 to 2020.

On top of military hardware, Tehran worries that Azerbaijan, over time, has become a hub for Israeli intelligence and surveillance. Due to Israel’s military and intelligence cooperation with Azerbaijan, Iran sees this as Israel expanding its presence in the South Caucasus.

On the surface, Russia may appear indifferent to the creation of a Zangezur Corridor, as Russia does not share Iran’s threat perceptions of Israel. This may be shortsighted. If Azerbaijan and Turkey take the Zangezur Corridor through military means, it could spiral into a larger-scale war between Tehran and Ankara. Despite the limited interests of the United States in the South Caucasus, facilitating cooperation with Baku and Yerevan to peacefully coordinate trade routes could serve to avoid a future war on Europe's periphery.

While stopping American military support will not necessarily inhibit Azerbaijan’s current aggression from occurring — Israel and Turkey provide most of its military hardware — it will remove American complicity.

Refusing to provide another waiver to Section 907 is the right thing to do, as Azerbaijan’s use of military force clearly does not serve U.S. interests since it has led to a humanitarian crisis affecting over 100,000 Armenian civilians and could spark a middle-power conflict on the periphery of Europe.

Baku will inevitably push back on this decision, but it will serve the United States well to resist external pressure and abide by consistent and fair rules and laws.

Alex Little is the Quincy Institute's Grand Strategy intern. Before joining QI, Alex worked as a Development Assistant at the Cato Institute, and is also a former Marcellus Policy Fellow with the John Quincy Adams Society.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/armenia-azerbaijan/

[Yervant1]

Oct 31 2023

ONE MONTH AFTER THE START OF THE AZERBAIJANI OFFENSIVE, 20 ARRESTED SO FAR FOR SPEAKING OUT AGAINST NAGORNO-KARABAKH WAR

INTRODUCTION

On 19th September 2023, Azerbaijan began “anti-terrorist activities” in Nagorno-Karabakh, claiming to want to “restore constitutional order” and expel alleged Armenian troops. After intense fighting, local Armenian forces in the self-styled republic agreed to be disarmed and disbanded. As a result, a Russian-brokered ceasefire was declared on 20th September 2023, ending the fighting after 24 hours. On 21st September, the region’s separatist leader, Samvel Shakhramanyan, signed a decree saying the breakaway republic will cease to exist from January 2024.

The Azerbaijani offensive led to a humanitarian crisis, the full extent and impact of which are yet to be seen. According to Crisis Group, on the evening of 29th September, authorities in Yerevan reported that nearly 100,000 people – more than 80 per cent of the enclave’s population – had crossed into Armenia. The fighting has also reportedly caused civilian casualties, including deaths and injuries, and infrastructure such as homes, hospitals and schools has been largely destroyed, further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the region.

As previously reported on the CIVICUS Monitor, from December 2022, a four-month blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, by Azerbaijani “environmentalists” had disrupted the free flow of goods into the region, leaving the Armenian population without access to food, medicine and fuel. The environmentalists stopped their protest in April 2023 after an official Azerbaijani checkpoint was established on the corridor, but the flow of aid to the region remained disrupted, further fuelling tensions.

 

FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION

Trade unionist arrested, reportedly tortured in detention

On 3rd August, Afiaddin Mammadov, a labour rights activist, was sentenced to 30 days in prison for “defying police orders.” He was allegedly tortured and denied access to a lawyer. Mammadov, the leader of the Workers' Table Trade Union Federation and a member of the Democracy 1918 movement, was arrested on 1st August and sentenced to administrative detention two days later. He began a hunger strike to protest the court decision. This is Mammadov's third arrest in less than a year for disobeying the police. The activist maintains his innocence and claims that the authorities are targeting him due to his labour activism. According to a colleague, while in detention, Mammadov was tortured and denied access to a lawyer. Per the same source, the activist was abducted by plainclothes police officers while on his way back from a demonstration organised by delivery couriers.

 

FREEDOM OF PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY

Villagers’ protest violently disrupted

On 20th and 21st June 2023, residents of the village of Soyudlu in Gadabay, Azerbaijan, protested against the construction of a second wastewater reservoir by a gold mining company. Despite the peaceful nature of the demonstration, the police used excessive force and deployed pepper spray against the participants. On the first day of the protests, five people were arrested under Article 513.2 of the Code of Administrative Offences (violation of the rules for holding rallies, pickets and demonstrations), and one protester was fined 1,500 manat (EUR 800).

On 24th June, civil rights activist Giyas Ibrahim was detained for 30 days for criticising police conduct on social media. Several journalists covering the events were also arrested. The police also imposed entry and exit bans on the village for more than 10 days, further aggravating the tense atmosphere.

Both the Government and police authorities announced they would take steps to investigate the allegations that excessive force was used against the villagers.

FREEDOM OF _EXPRESSION_

Many arrested, prosecuted for criticising Nagorno-Karabakh offensive

On 21st September, two days after the start of the Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, OC-Media reported that the authorities had arrested at least five people who publicly spoke out against the war. Three people were arrested on 20th and 21st September for posting “banned” content on social media. Two of them were immediately sentenced to 30 days’ administrative detention, while the third person had not yet appeared in court at the time of publication of the article. Another anti-war activist was sentenced to 30 days administrative detention for disobeying the police, while a fifth person, Afiaddin Mammadov, the president of the Workers' Table trade union federation, was reportedly charged with stabbing a man and faces up to five years in prison.

On 21st October, OC-Media reported that Azerbaijani activist Mohyeddin Orujov had been sentenced to 30 days’ administrative detention for criticising President Ilham Aliyev on social media. The activist’s brother also claimed that Orujov was harassed and beaten at the police station. The same source reported that, since the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh offensive, some 20 politicians and political and social activists have been arrested on similar charges to the ones mentioned above. Most of those arrested stated that they were detained for writing articles critical of the government and the presidency.

https://monitor.civicus.org/explore/one-month-after-the-start-of-the-azerbaijani-offensive-20-arrested-for-speaking-out-against-nagorno-karabakh-war/

[MosJan]

[Yervant1]

Panorama, Armenia

Nov 1 2023

Lemkin Institute issues Red Flag Alert for Azerbaijan in Armenia

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention is issuing a Red Flag Alert for Azerbaijan in Armenia, due to the alarming potential for an invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan in the coming days and weeks.

"Azerbaijan has long coveted Armenia’s southern Syunik Province, which has been discussed in the recent past as the site of an Azerbaijani-controlled “Zangezur Corridor” to Nakhichevan. Considering recent political developments in the region—including the Azerbaijani invasion of Artsakh on September 19, 2023 and the ensuing seizure of the territory—and well-established genocidal Armenophobia endemic in Türkiye and Azerbaijan, an Azerbaijani invasion runs a dangerously high risk of devolving into genocide. We remind the world that genocide is not only expressed through mass murder. As was the case during the recent seizure of Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh in September of 2023, genocide can also be expressed through a pattern of massacre, atrocity, and forced displacement from indigenous territory when the ideology behind these actions is aimed at destroying an identity in whole or in part," it said in a statement on Wednesday.

"To avoid a catastrophic invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan, which would considerably threaten the peace and stability in the region for decades to come, it is imperative that Armenia and its allies do everything in their power to ensure that an invasion is unpalatable to Azerbaijan. Western powers, which have encouraged Armenia to distance itself from the Russian Federation (the state that has traditionally protected Armenia from Turkish and Azerbaijani aggression and expansionism—whom critics allege failed to defend Armenia from invasion as a member of the CSTO), must not fail to act while another genocide has begun brewing in the South Caucasus. Granting such a level of impunity to the genocidal atrocities committed by the Azerbaijani government and enabled by the Turkish state will only embolden them to continue their destabilizing agenda of aggression and expansionism in the South Caucasus, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

"Accordingly Western powers need to help Armenia strengthen its sovereign borders and its diplomatic position in the region. They can do this by insisting on Armenian control of any corridor running through its territory. They can further assist Armenia in securing its sovereignty by forcing Azerbaijan to withdraw its army from the border regions, by imposing sanctions on the Aliyev family, and by suspending Azerbaijan’s current visa and energy agreements with the EU, as suggested by a European Parliament resolution on October 5. France’s decision to increase weapons sales to Armenia could be helpful, but only if there is coordinated action and material support in the event of an invasion by Azerbaijan. The United States, for its part, can enforce Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act (1992), which excludes Azerbaijan from participation in economic programs created by the act. Section 907 has been waived by US presidents each year since 2002 but, given that Aliyev has proven to be a brutal genocidaire, the waivers must come to a permanent end.

"If the Western world continues to ignore genocide and effectively embrace it as a legitimate solution to intractable conflicts created and perpetuated by regimes like Azerbaijan, it will not only declare an end to the rules-based order of the post-Holocaust world; it will usher in an age of genocide as (if not more) destructive than the one that characterized the last mad rush for control of territory and resources across the globe," the Lemkin Institute said.

https://www.panorama.am/en/news/2023/11/01/Lemkin-Institute-Armenia/2919845

[Yervant1]

Nov 1 2023

COMMENT: Aliyev could still lose in the Great Game he started

By Robert Ananyan in Yerevan November 1, 2023

The Great Game in the South Caucasus continues despite the de facto dissolution of Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia and the West are in fierce competition to reconcile Armenia and Azerbaijan, which would also confirm one of them as the prime mover in the South Caucasus.

After its new attack on Karabakh on September 19, relations between the West and Azerbaijan have become complicated.

Azerbaijan, which is in alliance with Turkey and Russia to remove the West from the region, recently refused to negotiate with Armenia through the mediation of European Council President Charles Michel in Brussels. The USA and the EU had strongly pressured Aliyev, who broke his promise not to start a war against Nagorno-Karabakh, according to German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

In order not to suffer political losses from the occupation of Karabakh, Aliyev first refused to go to Granada to participate in the meeting with Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and then also cancelled the meeting in Brussels. Afterwards he announced in Bishkek that his preferred format is with Russian mediation. He invited the Armenian premier to both Moscow and Tbilisi. This is Aliyev's blackmail against the West to block any pressure on Baku.

In Granada, Armenia received the support of Germany, France, and the European Union (EU), which in a sense is a kind of security guarantee. In the agreed statement, what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh was described as a mass displacement, and there was unwavering support for Armenia's sovereignty, territorial integrity, and inviolability of borders. It was also mentioned that borders should be drawn according to the last map of the USSR.

The European Parliament, in a resolution adopted on October 5, condemned Azerbaijan's military aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh and called on the EU leadership to impose sanctions on Azerbaijani officials who are responsible for the ceasefire violation in Nagorno-Karabakh and numerous abuses of human rights. The European Commission was urged to refuse the purchase of gas from Azerbaijan if it takes military steps against Armenia. Parliaments of individual European countries also adopted resolutions condemning Azerbaijan.

The US State Department announced on October 15, that it strongly supports Armenia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. "We emphasised that any violation of that sovereignty and territorial integrity will lead to serious consequences," it said. In short, the West drew a red line before Aliyev, forbidding any military aggression against Armenia.

Avoidance strategy

These developments made Aliyev realise that he would not succeed in Brussels, but on the contrary, would be told to recognise the territorial integrity of Armenia with an area of 29,800 square kilometers.

This would deprive Baku of the chance to create a narrative to carry out new military attacks against Armenia, using as an excuse, for example, the eight villages under Armenian occupation. The West has forbidden Azerbaijan to attack Armenia and re-occupy the "eight villages or three enclaves".

Aliyev avoided meeting the European interlocutors. Furthermore, he exploited the fact that Armenia had recognised Nagorno-Karabakh as a territory of Azerbaijan in the previous negotiations under the EU format. He declared that this is a basis for extending his sovereignty over Karabakh through a military operation. He no longer has anything to gain from the Western format, and is therefore boycotting it.

Why is the Russian format preferable for Azerbaijan? Azerbaijan cannot demand in Brussels that Armenia provide it and Russia with the "Zangezur Corridor" through Armenian territory to its exclave of Nakhitchevan, but it can do this in Moscow.

At the meeting held in Brussels on May 14, Azerbaijan had agreed that Armenia and Azerbaijan should seek the help of the World Customs Organisation to restore railway and transport connections. This implies the approval of Armenia's sovereignty and jurisdiction over roads in its territory. The West considers the topic of the Zangezur Corridor closed.

Meanwhile, Russia is interested in creating a Zangezur Corridor outside of Armenia's customs, border, and security controls, which it will control with Russian Security Forces.

Unlike the United States and the European Union, Moscow also turns a blind eye to Aliyev carrying out military attacks against Armenia. During the Azerbaijani attacks, Russia refused to fulfill its security obligations towards Armenia, causing a security vacuum. This is a lever of pressure against the Armenian government so that it is forced to cede the Zangezur Corridor to Baku and Moscow. This scheme has been used for three years now.

Another military aggression of Azerbaijan against Armenia would be an excellent opportunity for Russia to finally deploy Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) peacekeepers on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The Kremlin announced the plan to deploy the CSTO in Armenia in autumn 2022, when Yerevan decided to deploy an EU observation mission on its territory.

Therefore Putin and Aliyev invited Pashinyan to Moscow to negotiate. It is unlikely that Yerevan will accept this offer. Yerevan realises that Russia is not a mediator, but a party to the conflict. Russia does not want to establish real peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, unlike the US and the EU. If Armenians and Azerbaijanis stop killing each other, who would the Russians "save"? Russian troups would be removed from the South Caucasus.

Georgia could be an interesting option, but Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili can at most offer Aliyev and Pashinyan a good hotel, delicious food, and a sincere wish not to go to war and reconcile. Georgia cannot present a political plan to resolve the 35-year-old Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Georgia has no leverage on the parties for the implementation of the agreement. If the Tbilisi meeting takes place, it will actually be an Armenian-Azerbaijani bilateral format.

Position of strength

Azerbaijan offers the formats of Moscow and Tbilisi to Armenia in order to exclude the US and the EU from the negotiation process. The absence of the West would be dangerous for Armenia, because Azerbaijan will continue to speak from a position of strength. Armenia has not yet managed to restore the military balance.

It will not sign a bilateral peace agreement with Azerbaijan in Georgia and participate in the Russian-Turkish-Azerbaijani plan to push the US and the EU out of the region. If it did, Yerevan will lose the support of the West.

Yet Aliyev could still lose in the "Great Game" he started. Despite the support of Turkey and Russia, Azerbaijan is a weak link for the US and the EU. The West can apply sanctions against Azerbaijan, imposing embargoes on the sale of Azerbaijani oil and gas, and the purchase of arms.

France, one of the leading states of Nato, will start supplying weapons to Armenia and will support the reforms of its armed forces. America's ally India is preparing to deliver a new batch of weapons to Armenia. Armenia has security cooperation with three other Western countries.

If Azerbaijan continues to boycott Western formats, the West can strengthen Armenia's defence capabilities, forcing Aliyev to forget about the new war and return to constructive negotiations. Azerbaijan could even be forced to accept back the 150,000 Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh under the international mandate of the United Nations.

Aliyev's next step will be decided by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Putin, who held a meeting in Sochi 15 days before Azerbaijan's September 19 attack on Karabakh.

It is still the case that Azerbaijan may not sign a peace treaty with Armenia and could prefer the logic of the "Cold War". There is a possibility that Azerbaijan will wait until a suitable window for new military aggression is created. Elections are coming soon in the US and the EU.

But if the US and the EU increase the pressure against Azerbaijan now, a new date for the meeting between Aliyev and Pashinyan could be announced in the near future under the Western format.

Robert Ananyan is a journalist based in Yerevan, Armenia, who focuses on the political, and security problems of the South Caucasus.

https://www.bne.eu/comment-aliyev-could-still-lose-in-the-great-game-he-started-299409/?source=armenia

[Yervant1]

Nov 3 2023

Another New War? Azerbaijan's Heroes: Soldiers Who Behead Armenians

by Uzay Bulut

• After Azerbaijan besieged and starved 120,000 Christian Armenians in the Republic of Artsakh in the South Caucuses for nine months, on September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan bombed Artsakh's communities.

• Hundreds of civilians, including children, were murdered. Almost all the Armenians of Artsakh have fled: they know that after all military raids, Armenians who have fallen into the hands of the Azerbaijani military have been treated with maximum cruelty.

• Beheading and mutilating Armenians appears to be a long-standing tradition of Azeri soldiers. These actions are promoted and rewarded by the State of Azerbaijan. Azeri soldiers who commit such ISIS-like war crimes not only escape accountability and are never prosecuted, rather they are treated as national heroes by their government.

• During Azerbaijan's military incursion into Armenia in September 2022, Azeri soldiers raped, mutilated and slaughtered a 36-year-old Armenian woman who served in the Armenian forces. They then posted a video demonstrating their war crime on social media. In it, the dead woman appears naked, with both of her arms and legs dismembered. One of her eyes is gouged out. A severed finger appears to be sticking out of her mouth, and another appears out of her private parts.... The Azeri soldiers videotaping can be heard laughing and joking in the background.

• So, will the US finally hold the government of Azerbaijan to account? Will it cut US military aid to Azerbaijan? Will it once again watch as Turkey and Azerbaijan massacre more Armenians and invade more Armenian lands?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on October 13 that in the coming weeks, Azerbaijan could invade Armenia. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has threatened Armenia with war multiple times.

Meanwhile, pro-Erdogan media outlets in Turkey are also playing their war drums against Armenians. The headline news in the pro-Erdogan newspaper Türkiye on October 3 refers to Armenians in Armenia's Syunik (Zangezur) province as "snakes", "gangs" and "terrorists". One headline reads: "The new nest of the snake is Zangezur". It claims that the Armenians displaced from Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh) are receiving military training in "terror camps in Zangezur".

When the Turkish media uses such words, its intent is to prepare the public for an upcoming war against an "enemy".

On November 1, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued a Red Flag Alert "due to the alarming potential for an invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan in the coming days and weeks".

The US government also knows that the next step for Azerbaijan and Turkey is to attack the Republic of Armenia.

After Azerbaijan besieged and starved 120,000 Christian Armenians in the Republic of Artsakh in the South Caucuses for nine months, on September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan bombed Artsakh's communities.

Hundreds of civilians, including children, were murdered. Almost all the Armenians of Artsakh have fled: they know that after all military raids, Armenians who have fallen into the hands of the Azerbaijani military have been treated with maximum cruelty.

Azeri soldiers, since their invasion began, have been uploading videos on social media showing themselves beheading and mutilating Armenians.

The Lemkin Institute of Genocide Prevention on September 23 noted:

"There are stories coming out of Artsakh of the beheading of children and the separation of older boys and men from women and children..... Azerbaijan has routinely treated Armenians with this level of barbarism, especially in the wars of 2016, 2020 and 2022. It is a country is run by people who do not hide their visceral hatred of Armenians."

Beheading and mutilating Armenians appears to be a long-standing tradition of Azeri soldiers. These actions are promoted and rewarded by the State of Azerbaijan. Azeri soldiers who commit such ISIS-like war crimes not only escape accountability and are never prosecuted, rather they are treated as national heroes by their government.

On February 19, 2004, for instance, during a three-month English language class that was part of the Partnership for Peace NATO-sponsored program in Budapest, Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani army officer, broke into the dormitory room of Armenian army Lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan at night and axed him to death while he slept. Safarov hit Margaryan 16 times on his head and neck with the axe, almost decapitating him.

A court in Budapest convicted Safarov in 2006 of murdering Markaryan and attempting to murder another Armenian participant of the course, Hayk Makuchian, in the same fashion. Safarov was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006. However, when Safarov was extradited to Azerbaijan in 2012, he received a hero's welcome in the capital of Baku.

According to anthropologist Sarah Kendzior:

"On August 31, 2012, Ramil Safarov was extradited to Azerbaijan, where he was greeted as a hero. As an adoring crowd cheered, Safarov walked the streets of the capital draped in an Azerbaijani flag, carrying a bouquet of roses. He was pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev, promoted to the rank of major and given a new apartment and money by the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry."

In 2020, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Azerbaijan's actions amounted to the "approval" and "endorsement" of the "very serious ethnically-biased crime" that Safarov committed. The court concluded that "the acts of Azerbaijan in effect granted [safarov] impunity for the crimes committed against his Armenian victims."

"In addition, the Court finds particularly disturbing the statements made by a number of Azerbaijani officials glorifying [safarov,] his deeds and his pardon. It also deplores the fact that a large majority of those statements expressed particular support for the fact that [safarov's] crimes had been directed against Armenian soldiers, congratulated him on his actions and called him a patriot, a role model and a hero."

During an Azeri raid against Artsakh on April 1-5, 2016, a Yazidi member of the Artsakh Defense Army, Kyaram Sloyan, was beheaded and mutilated by Azeri soldiers. Videos and pictures showing Azeri soldiers posing with Sloyan's severed head were posted on social media networks. The Sunday Times called them "shocking souvenir photos of uniformed Azerbaijani soldiers posing with the severed head".

Sloyan was reburied in his father's village in Armenia after the International Committee of the Red Cross retrieved his severed head and returned it to his family.

"When they brought the body, we didn't know that it's headless," Sloyan's grief-stricken father Kyalash told RFE/RL's Armenian service on April 11, 2016. "It was very painful to discover that. They brought the head yesterday."

The Azerbaijani officer who decapitated Sloyan reportedly became a national hero in Azerbaijan. President Aliyev awarded him a medal in May 2016.

The Office of the Human Rights Defender of the Artsakh Republic published an interim public report on the atrocities committed by the Azerbaijani Military Forces during the four- day war in April 2016.

The report noted that both civilians and servicemen were executed and mutilated by the Azeri Army. Some Artsakh soldiers were, "along with other forms of dismemberment, also subjected to beheading," Graphic images of the abuses were also published in the report.

During Azerbaijan's 2020 war against Artsakh, Azeri accounts once again posted videos on Telegram which showed Azeris beheading Armenian civilians, soldiers and prisoners of war. One was Yuri Asryan, a reclusive 82-year-old who had refused to leave his village on October 20, 2020 when the invading Azerbaijani forces approached.

During Azerbaijan's military incursion into Armenia in September 2022, Azeri soldiers raped, mutilated and slaughtered a 36-year-old Armenian woman who served in the Armenian forces. They then posted a video demonstrating their war crime on social media. In it, the dead woman appears naked, with both of her arms and legs dismembered. One of her eyes is gouged out. A severed finger appears to be sticking out of her mouth, and another appears out of her private parts.

The video also includes several other mutilated and beheaded Armenian men. The Azeri soldiers videotaping can be heard laughing and joking in the background.

The words of Kamil Zeynallı, an Azeri athlete with 1.7 million Instagram followers, demonstrate the Azeri path to national "heroism". Zeynalli said in a WhatsApp call later posted on social media:

"Shed the blood of the Armenians. You'll return to our country like a man. You'll be free like a man. Our president [Aliyev] is behind those who behead Armenians.

"

Whoever cuts off

the heads of Armenians, our esteemed president is by their side."

Azerbaijan tries to spread propaganda in the West about allegedly being a "tolerant" and "multicultural" society. This propaganda is refuted by Azerbaijan's rewarding soldiers who behead Armenians, among many other war crimes they commit against Armenians.

There is no government other than Azerbaijan that so proudly rewards soldiers who behead and mutilate their captives, except perhaps for the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic State (ISIS).

The jihadists' use of beheadings is based on Islamic scriptures and Islamic history:

"So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds..., and either [confer] favor afterwards or ransom [them] until the war lays down its burdens. That [is the command]. And if Allah had willed, He could have taken vengeance upon them [Himself], but [He ordered armed struggle] to test some of you by means of others. And those who are killed in the cause of Allah – never will He waste their deeds." –

Quran 47:4,

Sahih International translation

"I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip." –

Quran 8:12 :

Sahih International translation

Beheadings have been commonly used by Muslims in their jihad (war in the service of Allah) against non-Muslims since the advent of Islam in the seventh century. (For more examples of Islam's use of beheadings and other forms of violence, see here.)

Azerbaijan's war against Armenians is jihadist as well as nationalist. During Azerbaijan's war against Armenians in 2020, Erdogan declared:

"We support Azerbaijan until victory... I tell my Azerbaijani brothers: May your ghazwa be blessed."

"Ghazwa" in Islam means a battle or raid against non-Muslims for the expansion of Muslim territory and/or conversion of non-Muslims to Islam. Erdogan thus openly announced that attacks against the Armenian territory constitute jihad. To fight against Armenians in Artsakh, Turkey was joined in Azerbaijan by mercenary jihadi terrorists from Syria, as well.

During the first Artsakh war (1991-94), which the Armenians won, Dr. Araks *****yan, an expert on political Islam and Azerbaijan, noted that "mercenaries from Afghanistan, Iran, the United States, Russia and Turkey were included in Azerbaijani army, and particularly Turkey and Iran provided Baku with military instructors."

Mohammad Younas was among the thousands of Afghan fighters that Hezb-e Islami, a major Afghan Islamist party, sent to Azerbaijan in the 1990s to bolster Baku in its war against Armenians.

"If possible, I would again join the Muslims of Azerbaijan to defend them against non-Muslims," Younas told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan. "My real motivation in going to Azerbaijan was participating in a jihad, but I also wanted to make some money," he said.

In the face of this barbarity, the world idly watches. Such complacency has allowed Azerbaijan to forcibly displace around 120,000 indigenous Armenians from their homeland of Artsakh. Armenians know what will happen if they try to live under the Azeri regime.

So, will the US finally hold the government of Azerbaijan to account? Will it cut US military aid to Azerbaijan? Will it once again watch as Turkey and Azerbaijan massacre more Armenians and invade more Armenian lands?

It is high time that the West sanctioned the Azerbaijani government and held it accountable for treating Armenians in the most brutal ways. As long as Western governments continue their military and commercial cooperation with Azerbaijan and turn a blind eye to its mass atrocity crimes, they will remain complicit in Azerbaijan's crimes.

Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, a research fellow for the Philos Project, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20123/new-war-armenia-azerbaijan

[Yervant1]

Armenpress.am

Disturbing video shows Azeri soldier ransacking children’s room in abandoned home of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh

16:53, 3 November 2023

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS. A video posted online shows an Azeri soldier plundering an abandoned house of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Azeri soldier, visibly ecstatic, was filmed presumably by one of his comrades, who is heard reveling behind the camera.

The Azerbaijani soldier is seen ransacking the children’s room and grabbing stuffed toys.

In a post on X, Armenian Ambassador-at-Large Edmon Marukyan called out the international community for not responding to the ‘savagery.’

“After keeping the people of Nagorno-Karabakh under a blockade for 10 months, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19, carrying out an ethnic cleansing of Armenians from the entire territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Now, this is what Azeris are doing with the abandoned homes of Armenians. Meanwhile, the international community kept insisting that Azerbaijan is obliged to guarantee the rights and security of Armenians, and Azerbaijan kept responding that they will surely ensure all of that. It turns out, however, that Azerbaijan does not even ensure the safety of empty houses of Armenians, their property in those houses, including children’s toys. Nevertheless, this savagery does not receive any sanctions or condemnation from the same international community," Marukyan said.

 

 

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1123476.html?fbclid=IwAR2qOoM_7NMaiZxjV0aRYrP-cvc0PTnlgVTFar0fe7dr65FRaRRHHdUpQ9M

[Yervant1]

 

EURACTIV

Nov 4 2023

 

Orbán congratulates Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh

Euractiv.com with AFP

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday (3 November) congratulated Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, in his first public comments since Baku recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenian separatists.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-long conflict for control of Baku’s Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Baku took control of the mountainous region in September in a lightning 24-hour offensive that ended decades of pro-Armenian separatist rule.

“I would like to take this opportunity to wish President Aliyev every success in his work to stabilise the region, and every success in the reconstruction work in Karabakh,” said Orbán during a summit of Turkic States in the Kazakh capital Astana.

“Congratulations dear Mr. President!” he added.

The Organization of Turkic States is an intergovernmental organisation initiated by Turkey comprising countries of the same family of languages, its members being Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Hungary and the internationally unrecognized North Cyprus have observer status.

The Hungarian language is part of the Finno-Ugric branch of languages, but Orbán says the country has Hun-Turkic origins.

Other leaders attending the summit have also congratulated Aliyev on this topic.

The European Union is looking to host talks between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to reduce tensions.

Unlike other EU members, Hungary has long cultivated a close relationship with Baku, taking Azerbaijan’s side in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In contrast, Hungary only restored diplomatic relations with Armenia last year, after a 10-year-long break.

Yerevan severed diplomatic relations in 2012 after Budapest sent Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani army officer convicted of killing an Armenian soldier, back home.

Upon his return, Safarov was given a hero’s welcome, a presidential pardon and a promotion.

(Edited by Georgi Gotev)

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/orban-congratulates-azerbaijan-over-nagorno-karabakh/

[Yervant1]

The Christian Post

Nov 4 2023

'Rid its borders of Christianity': Azerbajian lands on list of worst Christian persecutors

By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter

The predominantly Muslim nation of Azerbaijan has landed on a persecution advocacy group's list of the worst countries for Christian persecution over its policies toward neighboring Armenia.

The United States-based International Christian Concern (ICC), which tracks the persecution of Christians worldwide, released its 2023 Persecutors of the Year report this week.

The publication lists Azerbaijan among the top 10 nations hostile toward the faith. The list includes Nigeria, North Korea, India, Iran, China, Pakistan, Eritrea, Algeria and Indonesia.

Sandwiched between Turkey and Iran, Azerbaijan has warred with Armenia for decades over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which consists of as much as a 98% majority Christian population, most of whom identify as Armenian Apostolic, according to ICC.

The two nations have entered into conflict at least twice over the last century, but following a monthslong blockade earlier this year, Azerbaijani forces commandeered Nagorno-Karabakh, a self-known to Armenians as Artsakh, in September.

The region was previously controlled by ethnic Armenians as the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh, a de facto independent state internationally recognized as a part of Azerbaijan.

After a six-week war with Armenia in 2020, Azerbaijan regained control of territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. An armistice brokered by Russia left the region connected to Armenia only by the Lachin Corridor. Nagorno-Karabakh had been under varying degrees of blockade since December 2022 and was completely cut off from Armenian supplies in mid-June before the September offensive.

"Azerbaijan's end game is clear: to rid its borders of Christianity either by forcing the Armenian people and their faith out of Azerbaijan or destroying the people and historical sites," the report states.

ICC highlights the language employed toward Armenians by Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, who "uses derogatory rhetoric, such as barbarians, rats, and vandals, to describe and dehumanize the Armenian people."

In 2012, Aliyev tweeted, "Our main enemy is the Armenian lobby."

"Armenia as a country is of no value," he tweeted "It is actually a colony, an outpost run from abroad, a territory artificially created on ancient Azerbaijani lands."

Despite the ancient heritage of Armenia as the world's first Christian nation, the report points to what it described as the international community's "ill-informed understanding of the ancient cultural heritage of Armenia."

Videos that surfaced of the 2020 conflict between the two nations showed Azerbaijani forces "intentionally destroying" Christian cultural landmarks like the centuries-old khachkars, or cross-stones, and churches such as the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral, one of the largest Armenian churches in the world.

"For most people living in the region, to be Armenian is to be Christian," the report stated. "Therefore, persecution against Armenians and Armenian residents of NK is persecution against the body of Christ."

Until the September invasion, the region had a predominantly Christian population. The 24-hour Azerbaijan September offensive killed at least 200 ethnic Armenians, including 10 civilians. Over 400 were wounded.

Officials last month estimated more than 100,000 Armenians were forcibly displaced from the region.

Of the displaced, roughly 32,000 have taken up accommodation offered by the Armenian government, while others chose to stay with friends or relatives in Armenia.

In October, Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accused Azerbaijan of "ethnic cleansing," warning that "in the coming days, there will be no Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh."

That prospect has raised international concern from organizations across the political spectrum, including the National Council of Churches (NCC), which released a statement reiterating its support for the Armenian Orthodox Church, one of the 37 member communions of the NCC.

"While genocide typically takes place methodically over months and years, the NCC believes we may indeed be witnessing a continuation of genocide against the Armenian people, one that is borne of supremacy as in other genocides, but rather than consume the perpetrators in swift and orchestrated killing, unfolds over the long term in disparate acts of ethnic cleansing," the NCC statement reads.

"As we have noted with alarm the illegal, humanitarian blockade of the region and the destruction of critical infrastructure, and observe the steady stream of refugees flowing through a single geographic conduit to safety, can we not assume this is, in fact, what is happening?"

Between 1915 and 1923, an estimated 1.5 million Armenian Christians died after they were expelled from the Ottoman Empire, now known as Turkey. Turkey denied the existence of the Armenian Genocide, and it took over 100 years before the mass killing was finally acknowledged as a genocide by the U.S. government.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/azerbajian-lands-on-list-of-worst-christian-persecutors.html

[Yervant1]

National Review

Oct 13, 2023

What Ramaswamy Said about Israel, Armenia, and ‘Financial and Corrupting Influences’ in U.S. Foreign Policy

By JOHN MCCORMACK

On October 9, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy sat down for a 25-minute interview with Tucker Carlson on Twitter where the main topic of discussion was Israel and U.S. foreign policy. Ramaswamy condemned the Hamas attack on Israel and defended Israel’s right to defend itself, but he also condemned most other U.S. politicians in both parties for “selective moral outrage” about war and terrorism overseas and said the foreign-policy positions of most Republicans and Democrats were dictated by money. As Alana Goodman reported on October 12 at the Washington Free Beacon:

Vivek Ramaswamy criticized Republicans for their “selective moral outrage” at the mass terrorist attacks in Israel, and argued that politicians calling for a stronger military response against Hamas and Iran are driven by donor money.

The Republican presidential candidate questioned why his GOP opponents are not expressing similar outrage about the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and accused them of “ignoring the interests of the U.S. right here at home.” Specifically, Ramaswamy, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, equated the influx of fentanyl over the southern border — a “genocide,” in Carlson’s estimation — with Hamas’s attack against Israel.

“The selective nature of ignoring certain other conflicts — even more importantly, ignoring the interests of the U.S. right here at home — is what irritates the heck out of me,” Ramaswamy

told Carlson

.

“It is shameful. And I think that there are, frankly, financial and corrupting influences that lead them exactly to speak the way they do, that’s just the hard truth,” he added.

Ramaswamy was apoplectic in response to Goodman’s article. “Anti-Semitism is morally outrageous. For this pathetic ‘journalist’ to suggest I believe otherwise and then pull quotes out of context from my discussions with @TuckerCarlson about Armenia & Ukraine is an outrageous, offensive lie,” he tweeted. Goodman replied:

On Thursday night, I spoke to Ramaswamy’s spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, who condemned the Free Beacon, as well as National Review and Mediaite, for their reports on Ramaswamy’s remarks. “It’s a Jewish [sic] and antisemitic trope to say that Jews run the world for money. And so that is exactly what the National Review, that is exactly what the Free Beacon, and that’s exactly what Mediate are trying to push. That is not what Vivek said, and quite frankly it’s vile,” McLaughlin said.

Later in our conversation, McLaughlin told me: “It’s really like pretty disgusting and like journalistic malpractice, and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if there could be — we look at legal options because it’s ridiculous.” Asked what legal actions might be taken against whom, McLaughlin said she was “not going to get into that.”

Before speaking to McLaughlin, I watched the 25-minute Ramaswamy–Carlson interview (twice) and came away with the conclusion that Goodman’s article was fair and accurate. Readers can watch it in full here and judge for themselves:

For those who don’t have a full 25 minutes, below are some longer excerpts that provide plenty of context.

About nine minutes into the video, Carlson said the terrorist attack on Israel was immoral, but “the conversation can’t be limited to right and wrong.” This exchange followed (emphasis added):

RAMASWAMY

: If you want to ask the question of right and wrong, then open that Pandora’s box. I don’t favor doing this, but look at what’s happening with Azerbaijan and Armenia. You don’t really hear much about that now. Why? Because Azerbaijan’s lobby is about as effective as Ukraine’s is in Washington, D.C. So, this selective moral outrage I do think is a problem.

CARLSON

: […] Armenia-Azerbaijan—what is happening?

RAMASWAMY

: What’s happening is an atrocity. I mean, you have people who are Armenians, largely Christians, six-figure numbers—100,000-120,000—being driven back to their country from a region that has long been a place they have called home, a lot of atrocities that aren’t even yet coming to light in Western media. But Azerbaijan has a lobby, a powerful lobby in Washington, DC. And I think a big part of what’s wrong in the United States today, Tucker— and I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but it’s why I’m coming in as an outsider to this nonsense—is you have a system that is bought and paid for, both for the people who run on the Democratic ticket, people who run on the Republican ticket, and people who make those decisions in Washington, DC, that are effectively managed by, in this case, the Azerbaijan lobby that has a lid on discussing this conflict, which, as you pointed out, most Americans haven’t heard of. But you’ll hear endlessly about Russia’s incursion on Ukraine and having to stand on the right side. That’s a separate point where I reject that Ukraine is inherently good anyway, but even if it were a selective moral outrage in that case, but not another one in just a neighboring area that interfaces with Russia as well. So open that Pandora’s box around the world. I mean, look at much of Africa, look elsewhere,

you’re going to find the ability to have selective moral outrage, but you only hear about it in certain selective cases that the media and the existing establishment in both parties deem fit for the American public. And what we need is leaders in this country who are honest in calling out atrocities where they occur. What happened in Israel was wrong. I think we require leaders, some on the far left are too afraid to say it was wrong. But at the same time, we need leaders on the right who are willing to say in other places to like what’s happening in Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The selective moral outrage that bothers Ramaswamy clearly seems to relate not only to Ukraine and Armenia but Israel and Armenia as well.

Then Carlson brings the conversation back to moral outrage over the slaughter of innocent Israelis but says he doesn’t understand why “the scale of the outrage” among GOP presidential candidates isn’t the same about deaths in America from fentanyl illegally trafficked from Mexico. Ramaswamy agrees that “there is no level of moral outrage . . . in the Republican Party of the same scale of this incursion right here at home.”

Ramaswamy says later (emphasis added):

I think that it is important not to create an equivalence between Hamas and Israel, as some on the American left and European Left are trying to do. It is wrong what happened to Israel, and I call that out as a human being and as somebody who’s on a belief of some people are on the right side and the wrong side of a conflict. I think that that is far clearer here than it is, for example, in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or other areas where people have baked that cake. But the selective nature of ignoring certain other conflicts, while even more importantly, ignoring the interests of the U.S. right here at all, is what irritates the heck out of me out of the politicians in both parties, and it is shameful. And I think that

there are frankly, financial and corrupting influences that lead them exactly to speak the way they do

. That’s just the hard truth.

As you can see in the paragraph above, Ramaswamy explicitly mentions both Israel and Ukraine and implicitly refers back to Armenia (“ignoring certain other conflicts”), and then he says that “financial and corrupting influences” lead politicians in both parties “exactly to speak the way they do.”

On Thursday night, I asked Ramaswamy’s spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin to explain exactly what Ramaswamy believes.

Ramaswamy believes that corrupt financial influence is dictating the position of most Republicans and Democrats supporting Ukraine, correct? “Yes,” McLaughlin replied.

And Ramaswamy believes corrupt financial influence explains why most politicians are not loudly expressing outrage over the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict? “He thinks Azerbaijan has a very strong lobbying influence, that’s correct,” McLaughlin replied.

But Ramaswamy believes corrupt financial influence does not explain why most politicians support Israel? “That is correct, because he’s saying there’s a very clear right and wrong here,” McLaughlin replied.

In other words, Ramaswamy’s current view appears to be that foreign-policy positions of almost all Republicans and Democrats are dictated by money on almost every issue — except Israel.

That spin is baffling. The topic of his Tucker Carlson interview was mainly Israel at first, before Ramaswamy focused on the lack of moral outrage about the Azerbaijan–Armenian conflict. And then Ramaswamy said American politicians speak “exactly the way they do” — meaning what they talk about and what they don’t talk about — because of corrupting financial influences. There was no special carveout for Israel from this accusation in his Carlson interview, but there apparently is now.

The logic of Ramaswamy’s current position is also baffling. Does Ramaswamy think that Israel has a weaker lobby than Ukraine and Azerbaijan? “I don’t know the answer to that question,” McLaughlin said. “He’s never brought up the lobbying influences of Israel.” According to OpenSecrets, pro-Israel lobbying is about $4 million a year — that’s 0.1 percent of all lobbying expenditures. Azerbaijan spends about $480,000 — about 0.01 percent of all lobbying expenditures. Both amounts are a pittance. But Russian interests, OpenSecrets reported in February 2022, “reported spending about $182 million on lobbying, foreign influence operations and propaganda in the U.S. since 2016.”

As for Ramaswamy’s complaints about “selective moral outrage” with regard to Ukraine, Israel, and Armenia, I told McLaughlin I couldn’t find any tweets or press releases from Ramaswamy mentioning the Azerbaijan–Armenia conflict, which erupted on September 19, before his October 9 interview with Tucker Carlson. She didn’t identify any tweets or press releases but said he had spoken about it on the campaign trail. Asked for an example, she pointed me to his YouTube page.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-ramaswamy-said-about-israel-armenia-and-financial-and-corrupting-influences-in-u-s-foreign-policy/

[MosJan]

Ալիևը զգուշացված է․Բերբոքի այցի արդյունքները

Aliev has been "warned" 



 

[MosJan]

lets see

[MosJan]

[MosJan]

Ինչո՞ւ Բաքվի դատարանը գերեվարված արցախցի Վագիֆ Խաչատրյանին չդատապարտեց ցմահ ազատազրկման ?

[Yervant1]

Armenpress.am

Azerbaijan’s ‘extremely dangerous genocidal appetite’ is growing day by day, warns Ambassador

14:58, 8 November 2023

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 8, ARMENPRESS. Greek Diplomatic Life magazine’s October edition features an article on an event celebrating Armenia’s 32nd anniversary of independence and the 30th anniversary of the reciprocal opening of diplomatic representations in both countries.

The magazine’s October edition also features an interview with Armenian Ambassador to Greece Tigran Mkrtchyan.

Below are excerpts from the interview.

MARKING OF 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MUTUAL OPENING OF EMBASSIES AND THE 32ND ANNIVERSARY OF INDEPENDENCE, THE MAIN MESSAGES:

Greece was one of the first countries to recognize the independence of Armenia, which was followed by the establishment of diplomatic relations. This year we are marking the 30th Anniversary of the opening of diplomatic representations, both in Yerevan and Athens. It is unnecessary to mention that the relations between Greek and Armenian peoples have a history not of decades, but of millennia, during which the strong friendly ties, common values, and approaches formed a solid foundation for the development of interstate relations.

In the early 19th Century, the Greek revolutionaries who were fighting for their independence from the Ottoman yoke also mentioned the Armenians as their fellow brothers in pursuing the same goal. The Genocide of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians of 1915-1916 and the Smyrna Catastrophe was another stage in our shared pain and standing by one another. The Armenian community here was officially established immediately after Smyrna in 1922 as several thousands of Armenians found safe haven in Greece, although some of our Armenian communities in Northern Greece and the island of Crete have a continuous presence in the region that impressively exceeds five centuries.

The young state of Armenia has always felt the support of Greece, both in terms of effective bilateral cooperation and in terms of the support shown to Armenia at international platforms. Today, Greece is one of Armenia’s most important partners in Europe and the world. Taking this opportunity, I would like to emphasize that we, Armenians, will never forget the sincere support of the Greek people and the Government of Greece during the most difficult periods of our nation’s history, the most recent example of which was the war of 2020 and the following developments in Nagorno-Karabakh.

POTENTIAL FOR DEEPENING BILATERAL RELATIONS, FIELDS OF COOPERATION:

There is an active political dialogue. A few days ago in Granada, within the framework of the summit of the European Communities, the Prime Ministers of Armenia and Greece, Nikol Pashinyan and Kyriakos Mitsotakis, had a meeting (the third meeting over the last four years), during which the latter expressed his support to and solidarity with Armenia in face of the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno- Karabakh and threats to Armenian territorial integrity by Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The meeting of our foreign ministers also took place within the framework of the 78th session of the General Assembly. In addition, Ministers Mirzoyan and Gerapetritis had two telephone conversations in recent months. In general, on the Foreign Ministerial level, there has been active cooperation and several mutual visits.

Taking into account the intensity of political dialogue and the content of multisectoral cooperation, I think it is time to consider the possibility of bringing the Armenia-Greece cooperation to a much higher, strategic level, which, I believe, will happen sooner than later.

PROSPECTS FOR TRILATERAL COOPERATION:

Of course, the tripartite format of cooperation, which is based on the commitment of the parties to common values, readiness to develop neighborly relations based on the principles of International Law, has a much greater potential for development. In the near future, we look forward to hosting a tripartite summit at the level of heads of state in Yerevan, which, I am sure, will set new targets for cooperation.

POTENTIAL FOR ECONOMIC RELATIONS:

Currently, efforts are being made to host the regular 6th session of the Intergovernmental Joint Commission on Armenian-Greek economic, industrial and scientific-technical cooperation in Yerevan in the first quarter of 2024.

If we talk about specific directions, then renewable energy is one of the promising areas of economic cooperation. Greece has made great progress, especially in the field of solar energy, this experience is very valuable for Armenia, where renewable energy is a rapidly developing field and there is a large space for investment.

Armenia also offers huge potential in several other sectors such as agriculture, pharmaceuticals, textile and apparels, food and beverage and of course tourism, a field of economy in which Greece has a unique know-how. Within this context, Armenia was the ‘Honoured Country’ at last year’s Philoxenia exhibition in Thessaloniki which is considered the most important tourism event in Greece.

Another booming field is information and communication technologies which has become one of the fastest-growing industries in Armenia, with a steady annual 20% growth rate. Armenia is intending to participate for the first time in the upcoming ‘Beyond Expo’, the well-known technology exhibition and summit which will be held in Thessaloniki on April 25th.

SITUATION IN NAGORNO KARABAKH, ETHNIC CLEANSING:

As you know, back in September 2020, Azerbaijan violated one of the fundamental principles of International Law - the principle of non-use of force and unleashed a large-scale war against Nagorno-Karabakh. It was possible to stop the bloodshed with the tripartite declaration of November 2020, the purpose of which was to move the settlement process to a peaceful course.

However, Azerbaijan, not receiving proper pressure and adequate international reaction for its aggressive actions and war crimes, encouraged by impunity, first started blocking the Lachin Corridor - the only “way of life” connecting Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia in December of last year, effectively keeping the local Armenian population besieged for 11 months, and later, on September 19th-20th, initiated another military aggression against the exhausted, isolated Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh.

The cities and villages were criminally subjected to merciless aerial bombardment, causing more than 300 dead, more than 400 wounded and more than 1,000 missing, including a large number of civilians, including children, women and the elderly. And all this is accompanied by the cynical Azeri rhetoric of “reintegrating” the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh.

The hypocrite rhetoric has reached a level, when Azerbaijani officials spare no effort to repeat that the Armenians left on their own will and no one forced them out as if preparing grounds to exclude their return. If the nine months of blockade of starvation, creation of impossible-for-life conditions, barbaric killings and mutilations of Armenian soldiers, dead bodies, women, even children and elderly during every attack and never being punished for such crimes, Hitler-style fist waiving of their leader and referring to Armenians as “dogs” and a “tumor of Europe” and renaming the street in Stepanakert (capital of Nagorno-Karabakh) after the name of Enver *****, one of the three masterminds of the Armenian Genocide, are not sufficient reasons for Armenians to flee, then what is?

The Armenians of Artsakh, who fought for their own self-determination in accordance with the elements of International Law for 35 years, today left their homes, the cradle which has always been inhabited by Armenians for at least the last three millennia and has been Armenian. An unspeakable tragedy of a global level has happened. This must be acknowledged.

The citizen of Artsakh laid down his weapons and left the house with his family because even after enduring nine months of hunger and other deprivations in front of the “progressive” blind public, he or she did not receive the support that should have been received by humane written and unwritten laws, because today the world needed Azerbaijan as a “reliable partner in energy” more than just Armenia fighting for its rights. If human rights, if morality and conscience still have any traces in the Western value system, this policy should have been reviewed before long.

Today, more than 100,000 Artsakh citizens are in Armenia and our government, with the support of international partners and friendly countries, is doing everything to meet their needs. The right of return of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians cannot be questioned and it should be achieved under safe international guarantees and with the presence of internationally mandated peacekeeping forces. Also, the former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh and all PoWs must be returned as soon as possible.

By humiliating Armenians and Armenia, Azerbaijan is not achieving a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, it is merely passing the issue onto the burden of future generations. Conflict solution means concessions. We do not notice any concessions from Azerbaijan, we notice only an extremely dangerous genocidal appetite which is growing day by day.

FUTURE OF THE ISSUES, REFUGEES:

There is no alternative to the peaceful settlement of regional problems within the framework of the principles of International Law, including the international commitments undertaken by Baku. Armenia will be consistent in restoring the rights of forcibly displaced Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh, applying all available international legal instruments. As is known, the Armenian culture of Nagorno-Karabakh is quite unique, including the local dialect. Today, Armenia is facing many social problems, like providing housing and employment for 100,000 refugees, despite this, efforts are being made to ensure the compact residence of Karabakh Armenians, to preserve the formed educational culture, public institutions, the goal of which is to preserve the original Karabakh culture and traditions. The preservation of the Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno Karabakh is also a very vital issue. It is important for the international structures to take these monuments under international monitoring. Many monuments of the early Christian culture are located there, such as the most impressive Amaras, Dadivank, and Gandzasar monasteries. In a number of places, there were cases of destruction of churches or attempts to rebuild them, in which the Armenian traces were cleaned. If urgent and necessary measures are not taken, we will have a situation as is in Nakhijevan, an Armenian region, where within less than a century not a trace of Armenian existence has been left. Barbarism, wherever it occurs, is condemnable and should be prevented before the day.

WHAT CAN GREECE AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DO? WHAT HAVE THEY DONE SO FAR?

I want to emphasize that the danger of aggression is not neutralized at all. Today, the Azerbaijani army is occupying a part of the sovereign territories of Armenia, continuing its policy of threats of force and blackmail. Azerbaijan is making new demands to Armenia, and in the absence of a clear international response, the danger of new aggression is quite high. The international community has an important mission in bringing Azerbaijan to a constructive field; all the culprits of the disaster must be clearly held accountable.It will be possible to prevent new bloodshed in the region, to force Azerbaijan to give up the threat of force, to return to dialogue only if international actors have a united will and appropriate pressure. Failure to comply with International Law must lead to serious consequences.

 

 

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1123739.html?fbclid=IwAR0BFtFjap-EoC15rfm4W8oIB57f0Db8SsXj4u0QjCYjZ1D1ylJBEt4sZwQ

[Yervant1]

Armenpress.am

Azerbaijan does not need a new war with Armenia, says Aliyev

18:14, 8 November 2023

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 8, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in the Nagorno-Karabakh capital city of Stepanakert, now under the Azerbaijani control, stated that Azerbaijan does not need a new war with Armenia.

"We don't need a new war. We have achieved what we wanted," Aliyev said.

At the same time, the Azerbaijani President noted that issues related to the army building will continue to remain a priority for them.

 

 

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1123758.html?fbclid=IwAR3BEjC-F0htoV5ApZREZZh03luF63gDnYUSdc-ut1WtlgkuK0Z-X8VipLc

[Yervant1]

The European Conservative

Nov 8 2023

World Media Silent as Azerbaijan Bombs Armenian Hospitals and Schools

Azerbaijan has driven Armenians out of their ancestral homeland.

• Uzay Bulut
• — November 8, 2023

There is a striking difference between the media response to Azerbaijan’s 2020-2023 aggression against Armenians of Artsakh, which ended in a genocide, and the media’s reaction to Israel’s retaliation in Gaza after Hamas’ October 7th invasion, massacre, and hostage-taking. Most international media ignored Azerbaijan’s bombings, in 2020, of hospitals, schools, kindergartens, homes, and other non-military targets in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). They have also ignored the beheadings and mutilations that Azeri soldiers have committed against Armenians.

Artsakh is an Armenian republic in the South Caucasus. Indigenous Armenians lived there for millennia until Azerbaijan bombed and invaded their territory on 19-20 September 2023, forcing around 120,000 Armenians to flee for their lives. Azerbaijan claims the region because, in the 1920s, Stalin granted Artsakh to Soviet Azerbaijan as an autonomous oblast as part of his “divide and rule” strategy. However, Artsakh has never been part of an independent Azerbaijan; instead, it has historically been an integral part of Armenia. In fact, in 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union saw the creation of two independent and legally equal republics: Azerbaijan and Artsakh.

Since then, Azerbaijan’s aggression has been unceasing. The September bombardments were Azerbaijan’s second military assault against Artsakh since 2020. An earlier assault took place between 27 September and 9 November, 2020, during which Azerbaijan indiscriminately bombed civilian areas, including hospitals and schools, for 44 days. On 28 October 2020, news website EVN reported:

Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh, and the town of Shushi came under intensive shelling today by Azerbaijani forces. A maternity hospital in Stepanakert and other civilian infrastructure were heavily damaged. One civilian was killed and several others wounded including first responders of Artsakh’s State Service of Emergency Situations.

The Associated Press then released video footage showing the shelling of the maternity hospital in Stepanakert by Azeri military forces. Artak Beglaryan, a former state minister of Artsakh and at the time the region’s human rights ombudsman, went to the site of the bombed hospital and posted a video on his X (formerly Twitter) page:

My video message and introduction on the Azerbaijan’s today’s deliberate strike on the Republican medical center of Stepanakert, including maternity and child hospital. Intl community bears responsibility for these #WarCrimes as doesn’t stop them. #DontBeBlind

Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also issued a statement:

This war crime, which is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, customary law, clearly shows that Azerbaijan’s target in Artsakh is the people—infants, mothers, the elderly.

On 26 February 2021, Human Rights Watch issued a report entitled “Unlawful Attacks on Medical Facilities and Personnel in Nagorno-Karabakh: New Research on Three Incidents from 2020 Conflict,” in which they detailed events of the attacks:

Human Rights Watch documented multiple unlawful strikes on a public hospital in Martakert in September through November 2020, and an unlawful strike on a military hospital in the town’s outskirts in October …

Two doctors [of the Martakert Public Hospital] said that when the shelling began on September 27, staff moved all 39 patients, including children and mothers with newborn babies, to the basement. Those whose health allowed it were discharged that day, and the rest were promptly evacuated to Stepanakert…

On September 28, a group of five apparent Azerbaijani servicemen attacked an ambulance…, killing a military doctor, Sasha Rustamyan, 26, and injuring the driver and the accompanying Armenian army sergeant.

Despite these reports, few governments showed concern. Most mainstream media outlets did not even report on these unlawful military attacks against Armenian medical centers, patients, and medical professionals. Schools were also indiscriminately bombed by Azeri forces. The Human Rights Ombudsman of Artsakh issued a report on 9 November 2020, in which it documented Azeri attacks against Armenian children and schools:

Targetings of civilian objects have been deliberate and indiscriminate—strikes on communities have been recorded from the very first day of the offense. The attacks by the Azerbaijani armed forces on civilian households have put life and health of children, women, the elderly and the entire peaceful civilian population, as well as their property, schools and other civilian objects in real danger. Moreover, these assaults have not been tempered relative to other targets and have included the full use of air force, missiles, artillery, attack UAVs and even internationally prohibited weapons and methods …

Densely populated areas, including schools and kindergartens, have been indiscriminately targeted. The armed forces of Azerbaijan have been acting with clear intention to damage lives and health of the civilian population, including children. Based on preliminary data, 71 schools and 14 kindergartens … have suffered material damages from the shelling, rocket and air strikes by the Azerbaijani armed forces. As a result of the Azerbaijani attacks, all the 220 schools and 58 kindergartens were closed. Consequently, all the 23,978 children in Artsakh have been deprived of the Right to Education, the opportunity to attend school and 4,036 children of receiving preschool education.

During and after the war, many Armenians, both civilians and soldiers alike, were beheaded or mutilated. Many videos of the beheadings and mutilations were posted on social media by Azeri accounts. According to a report by Artsakh’s Human Rights Ombudsman, some examples include:

Yuri Asriyan, a resident of Azokh village, Hadrut region, could not leave his place of residence due to health problems. He was captured on October 21 by Azerbaijani troops who invaded the village. Later, in December 2020, a video was spread on the Internet, which contained the scene of Asriyan being beheaded. He repeatedly asked not to be beheaded in the name of ‘Allah’, but a soldier in the uniform of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces beheaded him. Asryan’s body was found on 21.01.2021.

Gennady Petrosyan, a resident of Madatashen village of Askeran region, returned to the village after evacuation on 27.10.2020 to pick up his remaining possesions. During the same period, Azeri soldiers in the village captured him and later in November posted a video on the Internet, which clearly shows Petrosyan being beheaded, and his body and amputated head placed next to the body of a pig.

Alvard Tovmasyan was born in 1963, lived in the village of Karin Tak in the Shushi region, and suffered from mental illness. Her body was found on 13.01.2021 as a result of search operations in the same village. Examination of her body revealed obvious signs of torture; her left ear and tongue were cut off. The corpse was identified by relatives and comparative examination of DNA samples.

The war was halted with an agreement signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, and brokered by Russia, on November 9, 2020. Yet, the Azeri aggression never stopped. During Azerbaijan’s illegal blockade that lasted from December 2022 to late September 2023, Armenians were besieged in their own land for nine months. They survived with very little food, medicine, or fuel. Then, on 19 September 2023, Azerbaijan again bombed Artsakh, invaded forcibly displaced the Armenian population, and arrested its political and military leaders. On October 19, Anahit Manasyan, the human rights ombudsman of Armenia, said, “Numerous bodies, including those of children and women, bearing signs of torture and mutilation, have been taken to Armenia from Artsakh.”

Many people regularly follow the news and international developments, but are unaware of the true scale of the 2020-23 Armenian genocide committed by Azerbaijan and its ally, Turkey. Azerbaijan’s two brutal wars, carpet bombings, siege starvation, beheadings, and mutilations of Armenians, and its violent targeting of hospitals and schools in Artsakh, should have made headlines in the West.

Despite the many crimes Azerbaijan has committed against Artsakh’s indigenous and peace-loving Armenians, there has been very little factual media coverage. The Western mainstream media has been mostly silent—perhaps even complicit with Azerbaijan. Their silence has helped Azerbaijan drive Armenians out of their ancestral homeland. Tens of thousands of Armenian families have lost their homes, left everything behind, and are now refugees struggling with economic, medical, and psychological problems.

The question demands an answer: Why have most Western media outlets been so blind and apathetic in response to the past three years of the Artsakh Genocide?

Uzay Bulut is a Turkey-born journalist formerly based in Ankara. She is a research fellow of the Philos Project.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/world-media-silent-as-azerbaijan-bombs-armenian-hospitals-and-schools/

[Yervant1]

Nov 8 2023

Oil firms bankroll Azerbaijan’s warring regime with billions in fossil fuel money

8th November 2023, LONDON - BP and its project partners have transferred $35 billion-worth of oil and gas production to Azerbaijan’s government since 2020, the year that war broke out in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The sum is more than four times Azerbaijan’s military spending during this period, as new analysis by Global Witness highlights the ‘dictatorship’s’ economic reliance on the British company’s fossil fuel operations.

BP – Azerbaijan’s largest foreign investor – operates and holds the biggest share of two giant oil and gas extraction projects in the country, which it started developing in the 1990s. BP’s current project partners include Exxon, Equinor and Lukoil.

BP’s contracts with the government require it to transfer a proportion of the projects’ oil and gas production to the state, whose share from January 2020 to December 2022 was valued at $34.9 billion, according to BP’s financial disclosures.

Azerbaijan’s defence budget was $7.9 billion over the same period, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In 2022, Azerbaijan was the world’s eighth biggest military spender as a share of GDP.

On 19th September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, a contested region with Armenia. The attack forced over 100,000 people to flee the territory – almost the entire ethnic Armenian population – and prompted the European Parliament to state this amounted to ethnic cleansing. [3]

On 20th September, one day after Azerbaijan began pounding Nagorno-Karabakh with heavy artillery fire, BP sent a senior delegation – including chair of the board Helge Lund and former CEO Lord Browne – to Baku to celebrate the 100th anniversary of former President Heydar Aliyev’s birth, and to reaffirm BP’s “commitment to a long-term partnership” with Azerbaijan.

The decades-long conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh flared up in September 2020. Thousands of combatants were killed on both sides before a ceasefire was agreed six weeks later. [4] Skirmishes continued and in December 2022, Azerbaijan blocked the only road from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, choking supplies of food, fuel and medicines and creating a humanitarian crisis in the region.

BP pays a share of its projects’ oil and gas production to the government as a condition of operating in Azerbaijan. In 2022 alone, the government’s share of production was $19.3 billion, more than the country’s entire public spending budget of $17.6 billion that year, according to UNICEF.

While BP’s oil and gas fields are hundreds of kilometres from Nagorno-Karabakh, the company seems to have few qualms about entering Azerbaijan’s disputed territories. In June 2021, BP signed an agreement with the government to build a 240-megawatt solar farm in Jabrayil, a district within the 2020 war zone which Azerbaijan captured in October that year.

Speaking in Shush in June 2022, a city in Nagorno-Karabakh that was also seized by Azerbaijan in 2020, BP’s regional president said that Azerbaijan’s “liberated territories” have “some of the country’s best solar and geothermal resources”, which makes them a “perfect opportunity for a fully net zero system.”

UN guidelines give companies operating in conflict-affected regions a heightened responsibility to demonstrate their commitment to human rights. Yet in September 2023, BP turned down a request to sign a joint letter from global business leaders to Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev, urging him to protect human rights for all people in the conflict zone.

BP began its partnership with Azerbaijan’s government – one of the world’s most repressive and corrupt regimes – in the 1990s, with an agreement to develop one of Azerbaijan’s largest oil fields, a deal dubbed ‘contract of the century’.

Responding to a request from Global Witness to comment on its operations in Azerbaijan, BP stated that it supports a peaceful settlement to the conflict, and that it remains committed to operating a safe, reliable, and resilient energy business in the region. BP also said that it has a policy to conduct environmental and social impact assessments, including human rights aspects, for projects in conflict-affected regions.

Azerbaijan, its government, nor BP or any of the other entities with which BP is engaged in the oil trade there are subject to sanctions over the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.

Dominic Eagleton, senior campaigner at Global Witness, said:

“BP’s long-standing partnership with the Aliyev ‘dictatorship’ has funded Azerbaijan’s militarization and aggression against Armenia. BP has been happy to keep drilling, having learned nothing from the historic mistake it made in Russia. Funding violent dictators is always a bad strategy.”

Notes to editors:

BP is the operator and holds a 30.37% share of the Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater-Gunashli oilfield in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea. The remaining participating interests are: SOCAR (25%), Molgroup (9.57%), INPEX (9.31%), Equinor (7.27%), ExxonMobil (6.79%), TP (5.73%), ITOCHU (3.65%), and ONGC Videsh (2.31%).

BP is the operator and has a 29.99% share of the Shah Deniz gas-condensate field, also in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea. The remaining participating interests are: Southern Gas Corridor (21.02%), Lukoil (19.99%), TP (19%), and NYCO (10%).

BP’s Payments to Governments reports are available here, under ‘Regulatory information’: https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/sustainability/reporting-centre-and-archive/. The figure for Azerbaijan’s military expenditure is taken from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI’s) Military Expenditure Database: https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex. SIPRI research shows Azerbaijan was the world’s eighth largest military spender as a share of GDP (page 10): https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2023-04/2304_fs_milex_2022.pdf

European Parliament resolution, 5 October 2023: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2023-0356_EN.html

The first Nagorno-Karabakh war took place from 1988 to 1994. While it remained internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, the conflict left Nagorno-Karabakh de facto independent, but with close ties to and heavily reliant on Armenia. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were expelled from the region as a result of the war, which also displaced large numbers of Armenians living in Azerbaijan. A fragile truce ensued, albeit with intermittent clashes. The unresolved conflict escalated into a full-scale war in September 2020, leading to a reported 7,000 soldiers and 170 civilians being killed, with many more wounded. Azerbaijan regained many of its territories before Russia brokered a ceasefire in November 2020, which brought 44 days of fighting to an end.

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/oil-firms-bankroll-azerbaijans-warring-regime-with-billions-in-fossil-fuel-money/

[Yervant1]

News.am, Armenia

Nov 8 2023

Ukraine ambassador to Azerbaijan makes another anti-Armenian statement

17:19, 08.11.2023

Vladyslav Kanevskyi, the Ambassador of Ukraine to Azerbaijan, has made another anti-Armenian statement.

This Ukrainian "diplomat" issued congratulations on Azerbaijan’s "Victory Day" in a post on Facebook, and praised the Azerbaijani people and authorities.

Among other things, Kanevskyi wrote as follows: "At that time, Ukrainians, standing shoulder to shoulder with Azerbaijanis, defeated the enemy, and today ethnic Azerbaijanis defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine on the battlefield."

The quote is presented as written, and it appears to suggest that "Once upon a time, Ukrainians stood shoulder to shoulder with Azerbaijanis and defeated the enemy, and today, ethnic Azerbaijanis defend Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity on the battlefield."

Although this "enemy" is not directly mentioned in the post, it is obvious that it is about the Armenians—taking into account the date of the congratulation.

But this is not the first time when the ambassador of Ukraine to Azerbaijan indulges in anti-Armenian demarches. Last year, the Ukrainian embassy in Baku published an entire video praising Azerbaijan's aggression against Armenians.

On the Ukrainian ambassador's Facebook page, there is also a statement by the Ukrainian community on Tuesday, with congratulations and joy in connection with the Azerbaijani occupation of Shushi, Hadrut, and all other settlements of Nagorno-Karabakh.

https://news.am/eng/news/791423.html