Wednesday, August 2, 2023
Karabakh Armenians ‘At Risk Of Imminent Hunger’
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Nagorno-Karabakh - People line up outside a bakery in Stepanakert, July 18, 2023.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s population is increasingly suffering from malnutrition and
facing the imminent threat of starvation because of Azerbaijan’s blockade of the
Lachin corridor, an official in Stepanakert said on Wednesday.
Baku aggravated the shortages of food, medicine, fuel and other essential items
there when it tightened the blockage of Karabakh’s sole land link with Armenia
on June 15, banning limited amounts of relief supplies carried out by Russian
peacekeepers and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
An aide to Karabakh premier Gurgen Nersisian warned that the food shortages will
become even more acute in the days ahead.
“Some food can still be found,” Artak Beglarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service
from Stepanakert. “People are trying to make sure that they are not totally
hungry, but the scale of malnutrition is already very large.”
“We can’t say that in a few days’ time people will be dying of hunger, barring
exceptional cases. But what we can say is that very soon there will be hungry
people who haven’t eaten for a whole day,” he said.
Over the last few weeks, bread was one of the few staples limited quantities of
which Karabakh residents could buy in local food stores. But it too all but
disappeared from shop shelves in recent days, with desperate citizens spending
many hours trying to buy flour and bake bread at home.
Beglarian explained that Karabakh has run out of its wheat reserves and is now
switching to grain currently harvested by local farmers.
“The harvesting work is very slow for three or even four main reasons,” he said,
listing a lack of fuel, the absence of spare parts for tractors and combine
harvesters, systematic Azerbaijani gunfire targeting such agricultural
equipment, and last week’s heavy rainfall.
Armenia -- An Armenian convoy of trucks carrying food for Karabakh is stranded
near an Azerbaijani checkpoint at the beginning of the Lachin corridor, July 27,
2023.
Echoing a statement by a Karabakh food agency, Beglarian said that the newly
harvested grain needs to dry up before it can be milled and supplied to
bakeries. The bread crisis should be alleviated in a couple of days, added the
official.
Ruzanna Tadevosian, a 27-year-old resident of Stepanakert, was skeptical about
these assurances. “They always give hopes that do not materialize,” she said of
the local authorities.
Tadevosian, who breastfeeds her 1-year-old baby, was among several dozen mothers
who rallied in Stepanakert on Tuesday to protest against the crippling shortages
and demand stronger government action. They were received by Arayik Harutiunian,
the Karabakh president.
Tadevosian said Harutiunian told them to “wait for two or three more days.” “The
president said he has some expectations from the United States and Russia and in
two or three days he will make a statement,” she said.
In what may have been a related incident, a man was detained in Stepanakert
early on Wednesday after firing gunshots in the air. Some local residents
claimed that he demanded food for his children.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan warned that Karabakh’s population is
“on the brink of starvation” when he addressed on July 20 an emergency meeting
of the OSCE’s Permanent Council in Vienna. He urged the international community
to put stronger pressure on Azerbaijan.
The United States, the European Union and Russia have repeatedly called for an
immediate end to the blockade. Baku has dismissed their appeals, saying that the
Karabakh Armenians should only be supplied with food and other basic items from
Azerbaijan.
Another Karabakh Resident Detained By Azerbaijan
• Susan Badalian
Azerbaijani border guards set up a checkpoint in the Lachin corridor, April 26,
2023.
Azerbaijani security forces detained a resident of Nagorno-Karabakh after he
crossed into the Lachin district for unclear reasons on Tuesday.
Azerbaijan’s border guard service said that the 61-year-old man, Rashid
Beglarian, illegally crossed a local section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Karabakh authorities insisted, however, that Beglarian walked to Lachin from the
nearby Karabakh village of Mets Shen. They said initially that he lost his way
“under the influence of alcohol.”
But the Karabakh prosecutor’s office claimed on Wednesday that Beglarian was in
fact “secretly kidnapped” by Azerbaijani servicemen as he walked towards Armenia
through the Lachin corridor blocked by Baku. His whereabouts remain unknown, it
said in a statement.
Beglarian has lived in Khndzristan, another Karabakh village located several
dozen kilometers east of Mets Shen, since the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war. His
two sons and the village mayor said on Wednesday that they don’t know why he
travelled to Mets Shen.
“He didn’t live with us,” one of the sons, Armen Beglarian, told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service. “We too learned [about his detention] from the Internet.”
The authorities in Stepanakert said they promptly asked Russian peacekeepers to
help secure the man’s release. It is not clear whether the Azerbaijani side is
ready to free him.
Another Karabakh resident, Vagif Khachatrian, was arrested by Azerbaijani border
guards on Saturday while being evacuated by the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC) to Armenia for urgent medical treatment.
Khachatrian was taken to Baku to stand trial on charges of killing and deporting
Karabakh’s ethnic Azerbaijani residents in 1991. Karabakh officials strongly
deny the accusations. They as well as the Armenian government condemned his
arrest as a violation of international humanitarian law.
According to officials in Yerevan, the European Court of Human Rights has given
Baku until August 8 to provide it with information about the 68-year-old man’s
health and detention conditions.
Khachatrian’s family has expressed serious concern about his safety. His
Yerevan-based daughter Vera said the ICRC has assured her that Red Cross
representatives in Baku are seeking permission to visit him again in custody.
Moscow Again Raps Pashinian
Russia - Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova gestures during
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's annual news conference in Moscow,
January 18, 2023.
Russia on Wednesday lambasted Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian for questioning the
continued presence of its peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh and claiming that
Moscow has scaled back its involvement in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks
because of the war in Ukraine.
Speaking at a July 25 news conference in Yerevan, Pashinian said that the
European Union and especially the United States have played lately the leading
role in international efforts to end the Karabakh conflict. He said that because
of “the events in Ukraine” the Russians cannot invest as much “energy and time”
in conflict mediation as they did before.
Pashinian also suggested that a “productive” dialogue between the Azerbaijani
government and Karabakh’s leadership could lead to the withdrawal of the Russian
peacekeeping contingent from the Armenian-populated region.
The Russian Foreign Ministry bristled at Pashinian’s remarks, saying that they
are “devoid of any factual basis.” Its spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, argued, in
particular, that in recent months Moscow has organized “a whole series” of
high-level Armenian-Azerbaijani talks, including Pashinian’s May 25 meeting with
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We have been and remain fully interested in furthering the process of
normalizing Armenian-Azerbaijani relations,” she told a news conference. “We are
doing everything to achieve a lasting peace and stability in the region.”
RUSSIA -- Russia's President Vladimir Putin (C), Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian (R) and Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev (L) meet in the Kremlin,
May 25, 2023.
Zakharova also denounced Pashinian’s “incomprehensible” comment on the possible
end of the Russian military presence in Karabakh.
“Is this a wish?” she said. “I don’t understand Mr. Pashinian. What is he
talking about?”
“Does the leadership of Armenia think that [the peacekeepers’] activity is not
necessary and desirable and wants to end it?” Zakharova went on. “They need to
set the record straight.
“Unfortunately, we can see that often times representatives of Armenia’s
leadership adopt an equivocal, so to speak, position on a number of key issues.
We therefore very much want to see no ambiguity on this score because juggling
with words does not end well.”
“And generally speaking, after the Armenian leadership recognized
Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory, any complains about Russia not making
enough efforts look all the more inappropriate,” added Zakharova.
The Armenian government did not immediately react to the criticism highlighting
growing friction between Armenia and Russia that raises questions about the
future of their traditionally close relationship. The tensions have been fuelled
by what Yerevan sees as a lack of Russian support for Armenia in the conflict
with Azerbaijan. In particular, Pashinian and other Armenian leaders have
criticized the Russian peacekeepers for not ending Azerbaijan’s crippling
blockade of the Lachin corridor.
Pashinian’s administration has also angered Moscow with its plans to ratify the
founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that issued an arrest
warrant for Putin earlier this year. A senior Russian lawmaker warned late last
month that the ratification by the Armenian parliament of the so-called Rome
Statue would cause “significant damage to Russian-Armenian relations.”
Armenian Archbishop Charged Again
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia -- Archbishop Navasard Kchoyan leads a ceremony in St. Sargis Church,
Yerevan, September 2, 2014.
A high-ranking Armenian cleric has been charged with fraud and money laundering
18 months after being cleared of the same accusations brought in 2020.
Law-enforcement authorities claimed at the time that Archbishop Navasard Kchoyan
had colluded with an Armenian businessman to defraud another entrepreneur.
The businessman, Ashot Sukiasian, was convicted in late 2017 of having
misappropriated most of a $10.7 million loan which his former business partner,
Paylak Hayrapetian, borrowed from an Armenian commercial bank in 2012. Sukiasian
had pledged to invest that money in diamond mining in Sierra Leone. He never did
that, according to prosecutors.
A district court in Yerevan sentenced Sukiasian to 16 years in prison. However,
Armenia’s Court of Appeals released him from prison in January 2020.
Sukiasian was arrested in Georgia, extradited to Armenia and prosecuted in 2014
after Hetq.am discovered that Hayrapetian’s money was transferred to the
offshore bank accounts of several Cyprus-registered companies. The investigative
publication published a document purportedly certifying that one of those firms
is co-owned by Sukiasian, then Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian and Archbishop
Kchoyan.
Sarkisian and Kchoyan strongly denied having any stakes in the company, saying
that it was registered in their name in Cyprus without their knowledge.
Sukiasian likewise claimed to have forged their signatures.
The authorities indicted Kchoyan in April 2020 amid mounting tensions between
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and the Armenian Apostolic Church. The
archbishop, who heads the church’s largest diocese in Armenia, denied the
accusations.
The Investigative Committee decided to drop them and close the criminal case in
early 2022, citing a lack of evidence. Hayrapetian appealed against that
decision, leading a senior prosecutor to order the investigators this week to
reopen the case and indict Kchoyan again.
The archbishop’s lawyer, Armine Fanian, on Wednesday described the fresh
indictment as illegal, saying that the investigators did not come up with new
incriminating evidence legally required in such cases. Fanian also argued that
the allegedly defrauded businessman missed a legal deadline for appealing
against their earlier decision.
Another senior prosecutor, Artyom Ovsian, said, meanwhile, that “large-scale
investigative measures” are now being taken to find such evidence. The
investigators are trying to locate and interrogate Tigran Sarkisian, Ovsian
said, adding that the former prime minister is not in Armenia at the moment.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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