Author: Ara Felekian

On Friday, February 3rd, Monday, February 6th, and Thursday, February 9th, students across the world protested the ongoing human rights violations committed by Azerbaijan towards ethnic Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh. Student representatives from Columbia, Cornell, GWU, Harvard, Princeton, Villanova, University of Buenos Aires, Imperial College London, London School of Economics, King’s College, and University College London participated in the events and publicly condemned the recent blockade of the Lachin Corridor.

Unfortunately, the decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh is rarely reported on by mainstream media or included in school curricula. Most Americans remain completely unaware of the current political situation.

On December 12th, 2022, Azerbaijanis posing as eco-activists imposed a blockade, accusing Armenians of transporting military hardware to Nagorno Karabakh and illegally mining for resources in the contested region. State officials in Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh dispute these claims and Azerbaijan has yet to provide substantial evidence. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty investigated the protestors and concluded that a majority of them have not historically identified as environmentalists. In reality, many of the participants are Aliyev supporters, military personnel, members of the Turkish nationalist group Grey Wolves, and more. Further, RFE/RL found that the Azerbaijani government provided the tents that the protestors sleep in. 

The Lachin Corridor comprises the main passageway linking Armenia to Nagorno Karabakh and is used to deliver hundreds of tons of food, medicine, fuel, and other essential goods to the residents of Nagorno Karabakh. The blockade has placed over 120,000 ethnic Armenians under siege for close to two months. Without their daily imports from Armenian proper, the residents of Nagorno Karabakh are suffering major food and medicine shortages. Businesses have closed, leaving thousands of Armenians unemployed, and markets remain empty. In addition, residents are experiencing sporadic disruptions to their power and energy lines, which lie in Azerbaijani territory. The government has started providing firewood and wood burning stoves so that residents can have a reliable source of heat and have shut down schools that lack energy supplies. These dire situations have exacerbated pre-existing health conditions, and without working hospitals and proper medical supplies, many patients’ health remains in danger. Patients in grave condition that require transfer to the larger hospital in Yerevan have been prevented from accessing life-saving treatment by the blockade. This has resulted in at least one death.

When the blockade was first instituted, Armenians were still recovering from the military operations that Azerbaijan launched on September 13th. The two-day attacks resulted in 207 Armenian soldiers dead, 293 Armenian soldiers wounded, 20 new prisoners of war, 7600 civilians displaced, and 3 civilians dead.

In addition to threatening Armenians physically, Azerbaijan has continuously engaged in hateful rhetoric, calling for the destruction of all Armenians and referring to them as parasites, dogs, savages, and terrorists. President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has publicly expressed his hatred of Armenians on countless occasions. In November 2020, he proudly declared: 

“We did, we brought [the Armenians] to their knees, and they are on their knees now! There is hardly anyone [Pashinyan] didn’t call over the past 40 days, begging for help and humiliating himself. We have disgraced him, and we were absolutely right in doing so. When he danced drunk on Jidir Duzu in the sacred city of Shusha, he should have thought that this day would come. He would receive his punishment. Now he hides like a mouse as he takes this document and signs it in tears. We showed him his place. We taught him a lesson. We chased them out of our lands like dogs. I said that we would chase them, that we would chase them like dogs, and we chased them, we chased them like dogs. He is now signing this document out of fear, knowing that we will come to Aghdam, Kalbajar and Lachin. No-one can stop us. Everyone sees our strength; everyone understands what our iron fist is like.”

The language Aliyev uses to describe and address the Armenian people has influenced colleagues, major media corporations, and everyday civilians. Other examples include:

Hajibala Abutalybov, former Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan: “Our goal is the complete elimination of Armenians. You Nazis eliminated the Jews in the 1930s and 40s, right? You should be able to understand us.” 

Habil Aliyev, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Gundelik Baku Local Newspaper: “I consider the Armenians my eternal enemies. Wherever I see Armenians, I will cut their tongues off and will call them perverts. Even if I am torn into pieces, I will always hate them…If I go to war again, I will not pity even the Armenian children.” 

Azerbaijani citizen, Facebook post: “We must drink the blood of these bastard Armenians, regardless of age and sex.”

American media and politics has neglected this crisis for far too long. The ethnic Armenian students and leaders from Armenian Student Associations (ASAs) on these 11 campuses therefore took it upon themselves to spread awareness within their respective communities. Columbia, GWU, Northwestern, University of Buenos Aires, and the London cohort held signs in public spaces on campus that advertised the devastating impacts of Azerbaijan’s actions. Villanova hosted a discussion on Azerbaijan’s recent violations of the trilateral peace agreement. Harvard Law and Cornell students stationed themselves at tables and engaged in dialogue with passersby. Princeton engaged in a week-long poster initiative to continue drawing attention to the issue. The participating schools all asked their attendees to sign a joint petition condemning Azerbaijan’s actions. They also shared organizations to donate to and ways to contact Congresspeople to urge them to take action. 

The skirmishes in September and the current blockade both occurred in direct violation of the 2020 Trilateral Statement. Our protest strove to shed light on all the human rights abuses that Azerbaijan has committed against Armenians over the past two years, in addition to the  innumerable violations they have perpetrated for decades. The events of the last few months have placed Armenians in danger. If not held accountable, Azerbaijan will continue engaging in such illegal and inhuman behavior.

This protest demonstrates that students across the world, the future leaders of America, are invested in this issue and watching to see how our current leaders react. International political figures, lawyers, and activists must act in accordance with their official duties and protect all Armenians from further atrocities. We ask our officials to join us in condemning the actions of Azerbaijan.  

To sign our petition and learn more about the conflict and places to donate, visit https://linktr.ee/studentsforarmenia.

Annie McGovern graduated from Wesleyan University in 2022 with a degree in Psychology and Government. In the fall of her senior year, she was selected to participate in the undergraduate human rights advocacy training program led by the University Network of Human Rights. She was then assigned to a project investigating human rights abuses committed by Azerbaijan against Armenians living in Nagorno Karabakh. During spring break, she traveled to Armenia and assisted her supervisors in conducting interviews and gathering facts about the ongoing violations. Her team is currently writing a report on their findings and engaging in advocacy work. She can be reached at [email protected].

On Dec. 12, 2022, Azerbaijan imposed a blockade on the Armenians of Artsakh, also called Nagorno-Karabakh. The 120,000 Armenian residents are prevented from receiving food, medicine, fuel and other vital goods which would normally pass through the Lachin Corridor, the only land route that connects Armenians with the outside world. The situation worsens every day the blockade continues.

The government of Azerbaijan, a very repressive and despotic regime, has long promoted official hatred toward Armenians and has repeated threats to conquer not only Artsakh, but also Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, and other regions of Armenia by force, which it claims is “Western Azerbaijan.”

Artsakh was arbitrarily handed over to the Soviet province of Azerbaijan by Joseph Stalin in 1923 when he was Commissar of Nationality Affairs for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He promoted a “divide and conquer” strategy of destabilizing non-Russian states in order to suppress any rising nationalism among the various ethnic groups that comprised the burgeoning Communist country. Stalin made this decision despite the fact that Artsakh had been overwhelmingly Armenian for 2500 years, never during that extensive time having a population less than 75% Armenian. At the time of its transition to Azerbaijan, it was 95% Armenian. It is part of the core historic Armenian homeland. Artsakh was referred to as a province of Armenia by such ancient authors as Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy, and Plutarch. During the breakup of the Soviet Union, Artsakh declared its independence in a democratically held referendum in 1991 in which the vote was over 99% in favor. This was before Azerbaijan declared its independence and became a nation.

On Dec. 12, 2022, Azerbaijan imposed a blockade on the Armenians of Artsakh, also called Nagorno-Karabakh. The 120,000 Armenian residents are prevented from receiving food, medicine, fuel and other vital goods which would normally pass through the Lachin Corridor, the only land route that connects Armenians with the outside world. The situation worsens every day the blockade continues.

The government of Azerbaijan, a very repressive and despotic regime, has long promoted official hatred toward Armenians and has repeated threats to conquer not only Artsakh, but also Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, and other regions of Armenia by force, which it claims is “Western Azerbaijan.”

Artsakh was arbitrarily handed over to the Soviet province of Azerbaijan by Joseph Stalin in 1923 when he was Commissar of Nationality Affairs for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He promoted a “divide and conquer” strategy of destabilizing non-Russian states in order to suppress any rising nationalism among the various ethnic groups that comprised the burgeoning Communist country. Stalin made this decision despite the fact that Artsakh had been overwhelmingly Armenian for 2500 years, never during that extensive time having a population less than 75% Armenian. At the time of its transition to Azerbaijan, it was 95% Armenian. It is part of the core historic Armenian homeland. Artsakh was referred to as a province of Armenia by such ancient authors as Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy, and Plutarch. During the breakup of the Soviet Union, Artsakh declared its independence in a democratically held referendum in 1991 in which the vote was over 99% in favor. This was before Azerbaijan declared its independence and became a nation.

Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev has made clear that he desires a passageway, the Zangezur Corridor, to go through Armenia, a sovereign nation, that will connect Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan “whether Armenia wants it or not. If Armenia wants it, then the issue will be resolved easier. If it does not want it, we will decide it by force. Just as before and during the [44-Day War], I said that they must leave our lands, or we will expel them by force. And so it happened. The same will be the fate of the Zangezur Corridor.” Aliyev continued his fanatical anti-Armenian animosity by stating, “Yerevan is our historical territory, and we, Azerbaijanis, must return to this historical land. This is our political and strategic goal, which we must gradually approach.”

The International Court of Justice in The Hague on Feb. 22 ordered that Azerbaijan should “take all measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.” Nevertheless to this date Azerbaijan has refused, establishing that it does not consider itself part of the civilized world, refusing the decision of the highest court on the planet, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.

The World Council of Churches and the Conference of European Churches denounced the blockade by Azerbaijan of Artsakh as a violation, among other things, “of international humanitarian and human rights law … creating a humanitarian emergency for the 120,000 ethnic Armenian residents of Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh,” and “trying to terrorize ethnic Armenians into abandoning their ancient homeland.”

The siege of Artsakh could be the next stage of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923, during which the Ottoman Turkish government systematically planned and implemented the murder of 1,500,000 Armenian men, women, and children, a heinous crime still denied by Turkey and its accomplice, the Azerbaijanis.

Deputy Director of the French newspaper Le Figaro Jean-Christophe Buisson said, “The Azerbaijanis don’t respect the living or dead, yesterday in Nakhichevan, today in Artsakh, tomorrow in Armenia.” He tweeted, “Under the leadership of Aliyev they have one goal, to erase the Armenian people, their faith, their history, their heritage, their identity. Who will stop them?”

This hatred toward Armenians has reached the United States. Spread across utility poles throughout Beverly Hills, California, during the last weekend of Jan. 2023 were flyers that threatened: “Azerbaijan, Turkey, Pakistan . . . WILL WIPE Armenia OFF the MAP Inshallah [if God wills]!!!!” Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse immediately denounced the flyers as did several local, state, and federal officials. It’s a shame that no condemnation of the flyers has been publicized by any Azerbaijani, Turkish, or Pakistani group or individual from that area.

Though President Biden courageously stood for the truth and acknowledged the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2021, he then loosened Section 907, a law that restricted military assistance to the government of Azerbaijan. The subsequent arms sales to Azerbaijan emboldened them to attack the Armenians of Artsakh and triumph over them in the 44-Day War.

 Faizan Hashmi  Published | 11:13 PM