Author: Lara Chatinian

 Fahad Shabbir

Staff members from the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday visited the Armenian village of Kornidzor near the Lachin corridor, the only land route linking the country and Nagorno-Karabakh, the administration of the Syunik Region said

YEREVAN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik – 08th August, 2023) Staff members from the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday visited the Armenian village of Kornidzor near the Lachin corridor, the only land route linking the country and Nagorno-Karabakh, the administration of the Syunik Region said.

"On the instructions of Robert Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a delegation headed by committee staff Sarah Arkin and Damian Murphy arrived in Armenia … Today, the delegation, accompanied by Syunik Governor Robert Ghukasyan, visited Kornidzor village," the administration said on social media.

Ghukasyan also briefed the officials on the situation that developed as a result of the blockade of the Lachin corridor by Azerbaijan. US Senate committee representatives observed stranded Armenian trucks with humanitarian cargo, which are unable to reach the enclave's residents due to the blockade, the administration said.

On Monday, two UN special rapporteurs and an independent UN expert called on Azerbaijan to immediately lift the blockade of Lachin corridor, saying it has caused a "humanitarian emergency" in the disputed region.

Armenia and Azerbaijan fought wars over Armenian-populated and Azerbaijani-located Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s and 2020, with numerous smaller clashes in between. The 1.5-month war in 2020 ended with a Russia-mediated ceasefire and deployment of Russian peacekeepers to the region. Lachin Corridor runs next to a Russian peacekeeping post.

The lifeline through which food, medical essentials and humanitarian aid get to Nagorno-Karabakh through Armenia was blocked in 2022 by people described by Azerbaijan as climate activists protesting alleged Armenian mining in the region. On July 11, Azerbaijan's State Border Service suspended the Lachin checkpoint, citing an investigation into alleged smuggling of goods disguised as humanitarian aid.

https://www.urdupoint.com/en/world/us-senate-foreign-relations-committee-staff-v-1735898.html

There is an ongoing Genocide against 120,000 Armenians

New York, August 7, 2023

The blockade of the Lachin Corridor by the Azerbaijani security forces impeding access to any food, medical supplies, and other essentials to Nagorno-Karabakh is in the media since December 2022 and it is discussed by political leaders. 

My contribution is to explain why it should be considered a Genocide against the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh under Article II, (c) of the Genocide Convention: “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.” 

There are no crematories, and there are no machete attacks. Starvation is the invisible Genocide weapon. Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.

In many respects, the starvation of the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh represents the archetype of genocide through the imposition of conditions of life designed to bring about a group’s destruction.¹ It closes a tragic circle because “[t]he treatment of the Armenians by the Turkish rulers in 1915 provides the paradigm for the Genocide provision dealing with imposition of conditions of life.”²

As an individual with some experience in the field, I was honored to make my contribution providing an impartial report and I am ready to assist any party committed to prevent the destruction of the Armenian group in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, long disputed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, is now running out of food and medical supplies due to a tightening blockade by Azerbaijan.

“The situation is really awful,” writes a friend of GZERO who lives in Stepanakert, the region’s capital. “There is almost no food, no medicine, nor any other first need supplies.”

What’s the background? Nagorno-Karabakh was part of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, but its population is majority-Armenian. As the USSR collapsed, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh voted for independence, touching off a war with Azerbaijan. After a ceasefire in 1994, the enclave became a de facto independent state propped up by neighboring Armenia, although it remained internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. A fresh round of fighting in 2020 enabled Azerbaijan to reclaim parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and to encircle it. In late 2022, Azerbaijan imposed a partial blockade.

Now, even as EU-brokered peace talks continue, Azerbaijan has tightened its grip, stopping even humanitarian aid vehicles from accessing the region through Armenia. The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has been weeks since it could bring in critical medical supplies. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Wednesday called for access to be reopened.

Azerbaijan has offered to send in aid of its own. But for the people of Karabakh, that’s a non-starter. Accepting that help would, they fear, support Azerbaijan’s claims to the enclave. Some locals have even blockaded routes in from Azeri-controlled territory to prevent any MADE IN AZERBAIJAN aid from arriving at all.

Meanwhile, the situation continues to deteriorate. Our contact in Stepanakert writes, “thank God our family still manages to find something for children not to starve.”

For more context, listen here to Ian Bremmer's December 2022 interview with Ruben Vardanyan, the Russian-Armenian businessman who was then serving as a state minister for the self-proclaimed government of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In western Azerbaijan, the city of Lachin feels like a vast construction site. Everywhere you look, efforts to erase the scars of the last all-out war between Armenia and Azerbaijan are evident.

As the humanitarian crisis worsens in the Nagorno-Karabagh of Azerbaijan amid ongoing tensions with neighboring Armenia, System of a Down‘s Serj Tankian has drafted an open letter urging stronger intervention into the matter.

In an exclusive interview, the artist tells SPIN that more than 120,000 people are without critical food and medical supplies due to Azerbaijan’s seven-month blockade of the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabagh to Armenia. The sovereignty of Nagorno-Karabagh is disputed; it is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but is made up of land historically occupied by Armenians for thousands of years. The conflict broke out into a short war in 2020.

“The residents of Nagorno-Karabagh have since relied on humanitarian aid from Russian peacekeeping forces and the Red Cross,” reads the letter, which was also signed by musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, Tom Morello, and Stewart Copeland as well as other notable entertainment industry figures. “Azerbaijani soldiers are now blocking the entry and exit of aid convoys and the humanitarian crisis is worsening. In shops, essential food items are running out. Hospitals have an acute shortage of drugs and medical supplies. In February, the [United Nations’] top judiciary body, the ICJ [International Court of Justice], ordered Azerbaijan to ensure free movement on the road. Azerbaijan continues to ignore the ruling.”

Tankian, who is of Armenian descent, has long used his platform to advocate for the country’s well-being. “Everyone is supporting opening the blockade, from the United States to the State Department to the European Union, but it’s all talk,” he says. “But while people are starving, telling a dictatorial regime to open up an illegal blockade is not going to help them survive. They’re just words. There’s no actions, and that’s the issue. Everyone has already condemned it, but no one is doing anything. For example, USAID [United States Agency for International Development] could easily tell Azerbaijan, we’re going to fly in supplies. They have an office in Armenia, and the Armenian government has supplies that have been sitting around. We’ve been trying to reach out to [USAID administrator] Samantha Power to get her attention on the issue, and she’s aware of it, because she posted about it on Twitter.”

Tankian admits the problem is complicated by Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, which has further destabilized the region. “Alliances have re-aligned between Russia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey,” he says. “Once the war started, Russia looked to Turkey and Azerbaijan as a way of surviving because their oil is being funneled through Azerbaijan pipelines. Turkey is then playing both sides between NATO and Russia to their benefit, and that has even become a stumbling block for Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership. They’ve basically been blackmailing NATO to get what they want, which is the arrest of Kurdish activists living in Europe. In the long run, these changes might be great for Armenia, because Armenia has definitely been pivoting towards the west since the 2018 peaceful revolution, but right now, I don’t think things are changing for the better.”

Those interested in spreading the word about the situation can contact their political representatives in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada.

“Most people read about Ukraine everyday in the press but don’t know that this is even happening,” Tankian says of the Nagorno-Karabagh crisis. “[Ukrainian president] Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Twitter praised Azerbaijan and their corrupt, fascist dictatorial leader Ilham Aliyev for helping Ukraine with energy supplies. So be it, but at the same time, the same dictatorial leader has put a chokehold on these people in Armenia and has invaded our proper, United Nations-recognized territories. He’s taken about 150 kilometers and his soldiers aren’t backing up. We’re being hypocritical as an international community, because we can’t sacrifice one country for another. It’s not right.”

On the musical front, Tankian confirms he will release a “rock EP” next year and that he has some collaborations with as-yet-unnamed artists in the pipeline as well. Having recently composed the score for the Netflix series Down to Earth With Zac Efron, Tankian is also “working on another series on a major streamer that I can’t name. I don’t think we’ll be putting out the soundtrack, but that will be out by late this year. There’s a few films coming down the line to work on too. There’s a lot going on.”

Alas, there is no activity on the books for System of a Down, which hasn’t released an album since 2005’s Mesmerize and Hypnotize and has played less than 20 shows in the past five years. The band made its only scheduled appearance of 2023 at the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas in May. “It was very fun,” Tankian says of the show, which also featured fellow nu-metal Mount Rushmore acts Korn, Deftones, and Incubus. “There were a lot of friends and family there, and seeing so many of our peers from the late ‘90s and early 2000s was a unique and beautiful experience.”