Agence France Presse — English
June 26, 2005 Sunday 3:53 AM GMT
With the shooting quiet, a war on the airwaves rages over Karabakh
STEPANAKERT, Azerbaijan June 26
Shells have ceased to explode over the self proclaimed Nagorno
Karabakh republic and shootings across a tense ceasefire line are no
longer a daily affair, but the war of words between the capital
Stepanakert and Baku remains just as fierce as a decade ago.
In a small radio studio in Nagorno Karabakh, an ethnic-Armenian
enclave that won its de facto independence from Azerbaijan in a
grueling 1993-1994 war, Ophelia Gasparian read the text of a report
on the separatist region’s recent parliamentary elections.
An ethnic-Armenian who fled hostilities in her Azeri hometown of
Fizuli when the war began, Gasparian spoke unaccented Azeri into a
microphone transmitting news with a pro-Armenian slant, deep into
Baku-controlled territory.
Listeners tuning into the Radio Justice short wave station on the
other side of the ceasefire line were likely surprised to learn that
“despite protests from Azerbaijan, another election in the Nagorno
Karabakh Republic has been held successfully and in stable
conditions,” according to Gasparian.
In Azerbaijan the very existence of the would-be state is denied.
Since the war, telephone access to Karabakh and Armenia has been cut
from Azerbaijan and with all borders transformed into a militarized
front-line, trade between Armenians and Azeris is virtually
non-existent.
In the years since the break-up of the Soviet Union, the media in
Azerbaijan have demonized Armenia, while both former Soviet republics
continue to trade recriminations over atrocities committed during the
conflict.
Azerbaijan considers the area currently controlled by ethnic-Armenian
forces — approximately 14 percent of its internationally recognized
territory — to be a hostile occupation of its lands by the Republic
of Armenia.
It is a view that Radio Justice, which claims to be sponsored by
private businessmen in Karabakh, aims to change, according to its
director Mikael Hajiyan, himself an Armenian refugee from Baku.
“They can live there, and we will live here. We want to build our own
home and they can come visit us as guests after they recognize our
status,” Hajiyan told AFP in his office in Karabakh’s State Radio and
TV building.
Today’s population of the enclave, approximately 145,000 people, is
almost purely Armenian.
But before the war some 25 percent of its residents were Azeri.
Hundreds of thousands of Azeris who lived in what are today largely
depopulated Azeri regions under Armenian control, were forced from
their homes.
Under Communist rule the two communities lived side by side, often
speaking each other’s languages and readily borrowing from each
other’s cultures.
Many Christian Armenians in Karabakh still greet each other by saying
“Salaam Aleikum” as their former Muslim neighbors did.
But wounds from the war have yet to heal.
In total the Nagorno Karabakh war claimed some 25,000 lives and
forced another million residents, including 250,000 Armenians, from
their homes.
According to Hajiyan and the message Radio Justice broadcasts four
times a week, it is time for Azerbaijan to recognize Karabakh’s de
facto independence.
“We’re building a radio-bridge of trust between our people,” Hajiyan
said.
Part of building that “bridge,” he says, has been the broadcasting of
the voices of Azeri soldiers captured by Armenian forces for their
families to hear.
The project has drawn criticism from the Red Cross which deals with
prisoner-of-war issues here. Hajiyan says he does it for purely
“humanitarian reasons.”
Meanwhile Radio Justice is countered by Armenian-language broadcasts
of the Azeri version of events from the Azeri capital Baku.
Azerbaijan’s Central Election’s Commission, which claims control over
any voting held on the territory of Karabakh, said the recent poll
there was illegal.
“Elections and referendums on the occupied territories must be
conducted only after the territory’s restoration to Azerbaijan,” the
commission said last week.