Author: Jhanna Virabian

On July 11th, 2023 the Azerbaijani guards issued a communiqué, declaring the temporary closure of the Lachin corridor, which serves as the sole road connecting Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The stated reason behind this closure was the alleged “involvement of Armenian Red Cross units in smuggling attempts” and they further announced that the closure would be lifted upon the conclusion of their ongoing criminal inquiry. However, it is worth noting that this situation is not new, as the corridor has been closed multiple times since December 2022. Initially, the closure happened because of ecologist activists blocking mines on the road, and later it was extended in April due to security concerns according to the Azerbaijani forces.

The closure of the Latchin corridor has had far-reaching consequences for human rights in the secessionist region. Access to vital necessities such as medicines, electricity, and food has been abruptly cut off for the 120 000 inhabitants, creating a dire situation. Dr. Vardan Lalayan, a cardiologist at the Stepanakert/Khankendi hospital, laments the shortage of stents and other medical equipment. He and his colleagues are only able to perform a mere 10% of the necessary procedures, which led to the heartbreaking loss of patients due to cardiac attacks. Moreover, this blockade has caused a food shortage, which led the de facto authorities to implement a rationing system since the beginning of January 2023. With rationing restricting to one kilo/litre of food products per person per month, health professionals have noted a significant increase in cases of immunodeficiency, anaemia, thyroid disease and worsening diabetes among women and children. In fact, as Nara Karapetyan, a mother of two children explained for Amnesty International: “We haven’t had any fruit or vegetables for over a month now. As soon as I can get hold of any food, I make sure my children eat it first, and I make do with what’s left.”. Finally, the blockade’s severe shortage of electricity and heating systems has also had a profound impact on children’s right to education: approximately 27,000 children can only access their schools for a few hours a day.

However, the tensions are not new. The Nagorno-Karabakh region has been integrated into the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist in 1923 despite being populated ethnically at 95% by Armenians. When Armenia and Azerbaijan both achieved statehood at the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, they began a war that resulted in 30 000 casualties. A ceasefire was brokered by Russia in 1994 under the name of the Bishkek Protocol, in which the Nagorno-Karabakh region has been proclaimed as independent but reliant on economic, political and military ties with Armenia. Despite attempts at peace, the mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh has rarely known a lasting ceasefire. For years, each side has accused the other of violating ceasefires, leading to renewed heavy fighting. In late September 2020, tensions erupted into the Second Nagorno-Karabakh war, which was eventually resolved by a peace deal proposed by Russia on November 9, 2020. The agreement saw Azerbaijan reclaim most of the territory, leaving Armenia with only a small portion of Karabakh. The deal also established the Lachin corridor, under the hands of Russian peacekeepers.

The peace deal has not provided definitive barriers to prevent Azerbaijan from taking control of the secessionist region. Despite ambitious international efforts to mitigate the risk of another full-blown war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, such as the dispatch of an unarmed EU mission to the Armenian side or the ruling of the International Court of Justice, diplomatic negotiations led by the EU, Russia, and the United States have faced significant challenges due to tensions in the region. Continuing mediation talks seem to be the only available option to ensure peace and ensure the fulfilment of human rights in the region, and both Baku and Yerevan appear to agree with this approach, recognizing the high costs of not reaching a negotiated peace deal.

https://theowp.org/the-lachin-corridor-in-nagorno-karabakh-unveiling-an-ongoing-humanitarian-crisis/

Bishop Mouradian of California-based Armenian Catholic Eparchy urges prayer and action for 120,000 ethnic Armenians

An Armenian Catholic bishop is calling for prayer and action as some 120,000 ethnic Armenians face what he and other experts call "genocide by starvation."

"It is a violation of every kind of law," Bishop Mikael A. Mouradian of the California-based Armenian Catholic Eparchy of Our Lady of Nareg told OSV News. The eparchy is part of the Armenian Catholic Church, one of the 24 self-governing churches in communion with Pope Francis, head of the Latin Church, that together constitute the worldwide Catholic Church.

For the past nine months, Azerbaijani forces have blocked the only road leading from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh (known in Armenian by its ancient name, Artsakh), an historic Armenian enclave located in southwestern Azerbaijan and internationally recognized as part of that nation.

The blockade of the three-mile (five-kilometer) Lachin Corridor, which connects the roughly 1,970 square mile enclave to Armenia, has deprived residents of food, baby formula, oil, medication, hygienic products and fuel — even as a convoy of trucks with an estimated 400 tons of aid is stalled at the single Azerbaijani checkpoint.

According to BBC News, local journalist Irina Hayrapetyan has reported that some residents have fainted from hunger while waiting in line for subsistence rations.

In February, the International Court of Justice ordered Azerbaijan to ensure "unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions."

However, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in July that "despite persistent efforts" the Red Cross was "not currently able to bring humanitarian assistance to the civilian population through the Lachin corridor or through any other routes."

That same month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev to ensure transit through the corridor and to pursue peace negotiations.

The U.S. is "deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh," Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said during an Aug. 16 U.N. Security Council briefing on Armenia and Azerbaijan. "Access to food, medicine, baby formula, and energy should never be held hostage."

Her remarks echoed those made earlier in August by four special rapporteurs for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, founding chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said the blockade amounts to a direct violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which prohibits "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction."

"It is time for the United States and other world powers to act," he said in an online Aug. 11 statement.

With the area surrounded by Muslim-majority Azerbaijan, the blockade amounts to an "ethnic cleansing of Christians," since "the sole Christian people in the Caucasus are now the Armenians," who are "not new in the region," said Bishop Mouradian.

"Armenians have been living on that land for more than 3,000 years," he said, "There are a lot of churches there from the fourth, eighth, 10th centuries. It's not a new thing for Armenians."

Armenia was the first nation to officially adopt Christianity in 301, having been evangelized by the Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew between A.D. 40 and 60.

Both Christian Armenians and Turkic Azeris lived for centuries in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which became part of the Russian Empire during the 19th century. After World War I, the region became an autonomous part of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan.

Nagorno-Karabakh declared itself independent in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union, and quickly became the focus of a 1992-1994 struggle between Armenia and Azerbaijan for control of the region, with some 30,000 killed and more than 1 million displaced. Russia brokered a 1994 ceasefire, and in a 2017 referendum, voters approved a new constitution and a change in name to the Republic of Artsakh (although "Nagorno Karabakh Republic" also remains an official name).

A second war broke out in 2020 when Azerbaijan launched an offensive to reclaim territory, with 3,000 Azerbaijani soldiers and 4,000 Armenian soldiers killed. Russian peacekeepers were stationed to monitor a renewed ceasefire and to guard the Lachin Corridor, but fighting erupted again in 2022.

Bishop Mouradain said the current blockade revives the specter of the 1915-1916 Armenian genocide, when up to 1.2 million Armenians were slaughtered and starved under the Ottoman Empire. The atrocities were the basis for lawyer Raphael Lemkin's development of the term "genocide."

Bishop Mouradain's own grandparents fled the Ottoman attacks, resettling in Lebanon, where the bishop as a child witnessed that nation's civil war.

"I know very well war is a bad thing," he told OSV News. "War and armaments are not the solution. Dialogue is the resolution."

However, he warned against "dialogue that becomes a monologue where the powerful control everything," and stressed the need for "dialogue where respect for each other is very clear, especially where the right to live freely on ancestral lands is accepted by both sides."

Bishop Mouradain also urged the U.S. government to uphold section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act, which broadly prohibits aid to Azerbaijan's government with some exceptions. The restriction can be annually waived by the President, who did so most recently in January, claiming the move was necessary for counterterrorism and security efforts.

But the waiver is enabling Azerbaijan to violate human rights, said Bishop Mouradain.

"Azerbaijan is using U.S. military aid to attack Armenian cities in Artsakh," he said, noting that human rights abuses, in addition to those incurred by the blockade, have been reported.

Last year, the European Parliament acknowledged and condemned a "systematic, state-level policy of 'Armenophobia,' historical revisionism and hatred toward Armenians promoted by Azerbaijani authorities."

Azerbaijani border guards in the region have been accused of kidnappings and illegal detentions.

"Armenia is the sole democratic country in the region," said Bishop Mouradain, adding that "the values that made human history (worthwhile) are being lost nowadays."

"It is a God-given freedom … to live on the land of our ancestors and to make our own laws according to the beliefs that we have, be it (as) Armenians, Turks, Ukrainians, Russians," he said. "As human beings, we have the right to live freely on this earth."

https://www.ucanews.com/news/ancient-christian-enclave-faces-genocide-by-starvation/102450

Instead of engaging in campaigns and diplomatic games, Armenia should commit herself to peace negotiations and the normalization of relations with Azerbaijan.

The land won back after a 44-day war in 2020 was one wrought with the unprecedented destruction of the public, private, cultural, and religious heritage of Azerbaijan. Aghdam alone—once one of the largest cities in the region—was obliterated to such an extent it is now known as the “Hiroshima of the Caucasus.” It was as if the occupiers had sought to remove any trace of Azerbaijan whatsoever.

Even though international law, every country in the world, and four separate UN Security Council resolutions recognize Karabakh—the lands in question—as Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory, for three decades Armenian politicians fantasized over the creation of either an independent ethnic Armenian territory or unification with Armenia by annexing those seized lands.

When the current prime minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, came to power in 2018, Azerbaijan expected he might pursue a different path for a peaceful settlement of the conflict. But his statement only a year later that “[Karabakh] is Armenia, and that’s it” ended hopes for the negotiation process. After the 2020 conflict, that statement met with hard reality, and the obligation to admit earlier this year that Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan.

If only peace was so simple. But when it comes to the Armenian leadership talking about peace while playing for time through campaigns of obfuscation is all too familiar. So when this week Armenia, together with the subordinated leadership of the separatist regime in Karabakh, launched the latest international campaign to scupper peace negotiations, it was unsurprising. The raison d’être of this separatist entity is contingent upon prolonging fantasies while avoiding the hard, geopolitical facts.

But the reality on the ground has changed, and Azerbaijan invites representatives of the Armenian residents of her Karabakh region for open and genuine dialogue about reintegration. On multiple occasions Azerbaijan has stated that their rights, security, but also obligations as an ethnic minority in Karabakh will be provided under the Constitution of Azerbaijan. This includes their religious, linguistic, and municipal rights, which are respected.

What is critical now is that any reintegration process must include the demobilization and disarmament of all illegal military groups and the complete withdrawal of elements of the armed forces of Armenia that remain. To halt the flow of arms to such groups—which has continued even as peace talks have proceeded—the Lachin Road which connects Armenia to Khankendi was recently, briefly, closed. Now it is reopened.

Azerbaijan has also offered to supply the region with food and medicine itself, through another additional, shorter road with a much greater daily capacity of over 17,000 vehicles. Both the European Union and the International Committee of the Red Cross have acknowledged this route can be used.

Yet this four-lane rebuilt Aghdam-Khankendi Road has, incomprehensively, been repeatedly refused by the Karabakh separatists, the road was even barricaded with concrete on the order of their leaders. A proposal by Baku to have supplies convoyed by the Red Cross—not Azerbaijan—using the Aghdam-Khankendi Road was rejected. Even proposals just to have a dialogue about it were rejected. The same leadership has, theatrically, even moved trucks to the Azerbaijani border on the Lachin Road checkpoint. Yet they say Armenians in Karabakh are facing ethnic cleansing at the hand of Azerbaijan.

To bolster this false claim their leadership has hired the former, controversial prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, to write a reckless report that alleges Karabakh is under “blockade,” its residents are starving, and claiming “genocide is being committed.”

In Azerbaijan, we are used to hearing such disinformation, but for the international community and particularly the media it is important to see that the use of such emotive, shocking terms is intended to obscure what is really happening from their view.

Claiming they are under threat while engineering a crisis to galvanize the international community’s support is intended to convince the world that Azerbaijanis and Armenians cannot live together, as we once did.

The paradoxical claim Azerbaijan is starving a population that is refusing its food was captured by the so-called leader of separatists, Arayik Harutyunian, who stated “It (Azerbaijan) is using one hand to strangle us and the other hand to feed us.” It should instead be put in the correct legal framing: an administration of occupation is blocking the Azerbaijani government’s provision of food and medicine to an Azerbaijani region. Tellingly, nowhere in the Ocampo report is this mentioned.

Meanwhile, the Armenian residents of Karabakh continue to suffer. Having been reduced to living off handouts from Armenia (itself one of the poorest post-Soviet countries). Economically, the region has been left behind the rest of Azerbaijan, whose GDP is today over 100 times its size at independence from the Soviet Union.

Instead of engaging in campaigns and diplomatic games, Armenia should commit herself to peace negotiations and the normalization of relations between our two countries. Instead, this week’s cynical and ultimately counter-productive attempt to make an appeal to the UN Security Council is another example that runs counter to such a commitment in every way.

Territorial integrity and sovereignty of every and each country is sacrosanct. A selective approach to separatism cannot be acceptable. Verbal statements from the Armenian leadership on supporting Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity should be inked within a peace treaty. Armenia should also finally cease all its territorial claims against Azerbaijan and pull out all elements of its armed forces from Azerbaijan’s territory. There is no other way forward. Azerbaijan has taken the first steps to map out the road to peace. The ball is now in Armenia’s court, with its political leadership.

Hikmet Hajiyev serves as the Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of Azerbaijan. He also serves as the Head of Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/does-armenia-want-derail-peace-south-caucasus-206714