Canada’s Armenian community has launched a coordinated grassroots and
lobbying campaign to convince the Liberal government to annul export permits for
the sale of Canadian-made armoured personnel carriers to Azerbaijan, according
to Armenian community leaders.

The campaign started after Radio Canada International and CBC reported in
July that the Toronto-based manufacturer INKAS Armored Vehicle Manufacturing
has signed
a deal with Azerbaijan’s interior ministry under which the company
has already delivered “a few” Canadian-made armoured personnel carriers (APCs)
to the oil-rich former Soviet republic.

The privately owned company has also set up a joint venture with an
Azerbaijani firm to produce APCs in Azerbaijan, which has been embroiled in a
simmering armed conflict with neighbouring Armenia since the breakup of the
Soviet Union in the early 1990s, said Roman Shimonov, vice-president of
marketing and business development at INKAS.

Chahé Tanachian, the Montreal-based president of the Canadian-Armenian
Political Affairs Committee, the lobbying arm of the Armenian General Benevolent
Union (AGBU), one of the oldest and largest Armenian Diaspora organizations,
sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to express the community’s
concerns.

“Canadians of Armenian descent and human rights activists throughout the
country are dismayed by Global Affairs Canada’s recent approval of the export of
Canadian-made armoured personnel carriers (produced by INKAS Armored Vehicle
Manufacturing) to Azerbaijan,” Tanachian wrote.

“The decision to furnish arms to a country which regularly threatens peace in
the region is one that violates all the principles that we as Canadians stand
for, and which Global Affairs Canada seeks to promote in the world.”

The controversy over the sale of INKAS APCs to Azerbaijan comes as the
government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is dealing with the outcry
over revelations by Radio
Canada International that very similar armoured vehicles produced by another
Canadian manufacturer, Terradyne Armored Vehicles, were
used by Saudi security forces in their heavy-handed crackdown on a
Shia-populated town in the kingdom’s restive Qatif region, as well as the
ongoing controversy over the sale of $15 billion worth of Light Armoured
Vehicles (LAVs) to the ultra-conservative kingdom.

Sevag Belian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Canada
(ANCC), one of the main groups lobbying the government on issues of concern of
the Canadian-Armenian community, said the news of the exports of armoured
personnel carriers to Azerbaijan created “great outrage” in the community.

“We reached out to the concerned governmental departments and agencies,
namely Global Affairs Canada,” Belian said in an interview with Radio Canada
International.

(click to listen to the interview with Sevag Belian)

Listen

The ANCC has also reached out to more than 50 Members of Parliament,
requesting them to make either oral or written representations to Global Affairs
to relay the message that the entire Canadian Armenian community “is absolutely
appalled,” Belian said.

The ANCC has activated a national grass roots campaign and set up a mass
email campaign appealing to the government to annul permits for the export of
Canadian-made defence equipment to Azerbaijan, he said.

The campaign has bombarded the Liberal government with over 1,200 emails and
letters, requesting a meeting with top government officials to discuss the
issue, Belian said.

Adam Austen, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland’s spokesman, said
Parliamentary Secretary Matt DeCourcey will be meeting with the representatives
of the Armenian community at the earliest possible convenience.

“Armenia is a close friend and ally of Canada,” Austen said. “We have strong
people-to-people ties and an economic relationship that benefits both countries.
We are proud to work closely with the Armenian community in Canada as well as
the Armenian government.”

However, Azerbaijan’s envoy in Canada dismissed the campaign by the Armenian
community as “hysteria.”

“The illegal presence of Armenian armed forces in the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan remains a main cause for the escalation of the situation and
continues to pose a threat to regional peace and stability,” Azerbaijan’s Chargé
d’Affaires in Ottawa Ramil Huseynli said in a written statement. “In contrast,
the acquisition of armoured personnel carriers from a Canadian company does not
pose such a threat, as these vehicles are intended only for law enforcement and
civilian transport.”

Cooperation between the Canadian company and its Azerbaijani counterpart
creates jobs for Canadians, the envoy said.

“In this light, the hysteria of the Armenian community, who should put
Canadian interests above the rest, is unintelligible,” said Huseynli.

Groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have criticized
Azerbaijan’s human rights record and accused it of a “thorough crackdown on
dissenting voices,” as well as persistent reports of torture and other
ill-treatment perpetrated by its law enforcement agencies.

In November 2015, Azerbaijani police used Israeli-made armoured personnel
carriers similar to those produced by INKAS in a controversial security
operation that resulted in the death of six people and dozens of arrests in the
town of Nardaran, about 30 kilometres northeast of the capital Baku.

The federal government granted INKAS permits for the export of APCs despite
its own ongoing concerns over Azerbaijan’s poor human rights record. In a
statement sent to RCI earlier, Global Affairs officials admitted that Canada is
“concerned with the recurring crackdown on fundamental freedoms in Azerbaijan,
particularly with respect to journalists and human rights defenders in the
country.”

In addition, INKAS and AZCAN, its joint venture company in Azerbaijan, laud
the military applications of their vehicles in the sales pitch.

According to data collected by the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute (SIPRI) over the last two decades, Azerbaijan has spent over $30
billion ($25 billion US) of its oil wealth to rearm and retrain its military,
purchasing high-tech weapons and munitions from Russia, Israel, Turkey, Ukraine
and Pakistan.

According to the 2016 Report on Exports of Military Goods from Canada,
Azerbaijan bought $378,705 worth of fire arms and ground vehicles in Canada.
Ottawa, however, denied a permit for the export of automatic firearms to
Azerbaijan in 2016 because it is not on Canada’s list of countries authorised
for exports of such weapons.

Belian said they cannot accept assurances from Canadian officials that
Canadian weapons being exported to Azerbaijan will not be used against civilians
or Armenian soldiers along the frontline of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“It’s a matter of principle,” Belian said. “Canada is becoming complicit in
further empowering the dictatorial regime in Baku and becoming complicit in
their efforts of suppressing the very fundamental rights that Canadian soldiers
have shed their blood for.”

As a full member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE) Canada can play a pivotal role in the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh
crisis by exerting pressure on Azerbaijan to make sure it agrees to a beefed up
ceasefire monitoring regime along the frontline between the two opposing forces,
Belian said.

Canada also fully supports the OSCE’s efforts to forge a peaceful and
comprehensive settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karbakh
region, Austen said.

“We fully agree with the OSCE Minsk group that a military solution is not the
answer,” Austen said.