“Azerbaijan is creating a ghetto in Karabakh, what’s the international reaction?”

Yerevan /Mediamax/. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that “Azerbaijan is creating a ghetto in Nagorno Karabakh today”.

He said this in an interview with AFP, the transcript of which is posted on Prime Minister’s website.

“Any genocide you know wasn’t like that they woke up one day and started killing people, slaughtering people. Let’s go back to the Holocaust, the one that the world knows the best. Did Hitler come to power and the next morning pulled out the sword and started chasing the Jews in the streets? It lasted years, it was a process, which could have been well predicted. It was expressed in rhetoric, it was expressed in policy.

Now in Nagorno Karabakh they have created a ghetto, in the most literal meaning of the word. I say again, sometimes we do not deliver the terms understandably, we just give people headlines, “humanitarian crisis”. Some percentage of our audience well understands all the details of what’s going on, but the majority does not understand, that’s not their business, that’s not their activity.

But Azerbaijan is creating a ghetto in Nagorno Karabakh today. What’s the international community’s reaction? Russia asks us how we justify our good relationships with the West, is that what you expect of them to make a semi-statement that the Lachin Corridor should be opened? Yes, the Lachin Corridor has to be opened. The International Court of Justice rendered a decision back on February 22. That is a decision of the highest international court.

By the way, Russia really doesn’t well recognize the jurisdiction of that court, but the international community, with the exception of Russia, recognizes it as the highest court. And now Russia asks us “Is this what you expected of the West, when establishing such close relations with the EU and other partners, your expectation was that they would say, for example once a week that the Lachin Corridor should be opened?” In the same way as we justify our relations with the West, in the same way we justify our relations with Russia. Like according to the logic of some western circles our relationship with Russia is not justified, because Russia is not fulfilling all its obligations, and is not meeting all of our expectations, similarly, Russia tells us the same about the West”, said Pashinyan.