Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in December 2023

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian declined to say whether his country would arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin should he visit the Caucasus nation following Yerevan’s decision to join the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for his role in the deportation of Ukrainian children in occupied areas. Pashinian, when pressed repeatedly in an interview with Britain's Telegraph newspaper, said, “Armenia has had extensive democratic reforms, and I don’t decide who to arrest or not to arrest.” Russia is a traditional Armenian ally, but tensions have arisen in recent years over various issues. The Telegraph said the interview took place in Yerevan.

Armenian leader Nikol Pashinyan says he is pushing ahead with democratic reforms while trying to keep the peace with his powerful neighbours

He is in the middle of delicate peace talks, trying to please Russia and the West, and sits on a geopolitical fault line where wars in Ukraine and the Middle East overlap.

So it is no surprise that Nikol Pashinyan chooses his words with the care of a man handling a box of matches in a petrol station.

“Fear is not the right word,” the Armenian prime minister says when asked about mounting concerns of a new war in the South Caucasus.

“The Republic of Armenia is a democratic and developing country,” he told The Telegraph in an interview in his Yerevan office.

“And the Republic of Armenia is implementing wide-scale reforms for improving our country’s resilience. By the way, in recent years, I think that the international community and our society have seen that our country’s resilience has improved significantly.”

Nonetheless, he concedes: “Of course, anyone with common sense would have such concerns.”

Mr Pashinyan, a former newspaper journalist, came to power in 2018 on the back of anti-corruption protests that ended with the country’s first free and fair elections.

His pitch then, as now, is that democratic reform and a pro-European path would make the country not only more prosperous but more secure.

Since then, the country has indeed crept up international indexes on press freedom, democracy and transparency. He won re-election in 2021 suggesting he still has a mandate for that strategy.

But the entire premise of that project has come under unprecedented stress.

In the past three years Armenia suffered attack and defeat in a 2020 war with Azerbaijan, the humiliating loss in September 2023 of the Armenian backed, self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic, and effective abandonment by Russia, its principal military ally.

Since then Mr Pashinyan’s willingness to make concessions in pursuit of peace, including recognising Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Karabakh, has caused public anger at home and a wave of protests he claims were designed to oust him from power.

However, it has not yet produced a peace treaty.

His search for a more reliable security partner has strained relations with Moscow without winning concrete commitments from the West.

And to cap it all, many in Yerevan fear that Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s strong-man president, is laying the pretext for a third offensive – this time to conquer land inside Armenia proper.

Azerbaijan’s 24-hour reconquest of Karabakh five months ago extinguished a 30-year old Armenian-backed republic that broke away from Azerbaijan in a brutal and bloody six-year war in the 1990s.

More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled in what the European Parliament condemned as ethnic cleansing, and Mr Pashinyan was forced to face down angry protesters in Yerevan who accused him of abandoning the region.

It also closed the central dispute in a conflict that has blighted Armenia and Azerbaijan since their independence.

For a while, both leaders appeared keen to seize the opportunity to make peace.

At separate meetings with Emmanuel Macron in Prague and Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Mr Pashinyan and Mr Aliyev agreed to renounce the use of force, respect one another’s territorial integrity and using the Almaty declaration, the document that saw the Soviet Union’s republics declare independence, as the basis for border delimitation.

By the end of October 2023, “the architecture and principles for a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan have been agreed upon. And at the end of last year, it seemed to us that we were very close, finally, to a final text of agreement,” he said.

But on Jan 10, Mr Aliyev appeared to walk back those commitments, warning in a rambling interview with local media that he would take military action if Armenia tried to rearm.

He also said he would not remove Azeri troops from several areas they have occupied inside the Armenian border, and rejected using late Soviet maps for a peace deal “precisely because our historical lands had already been given to them”.

Azeri officials strongly deny planning a new war or harbouring territorial claims against Armenia, and have blamed delays in the peace process on Armenian intransigence.

In Yerevan, the remarks sounded very much like the pretext for a land grab.

“One may not say that these assessments are groundless,” Mr Pashinyan said when asked if he feared such a plot. “I publicly have said this is a blow to the peace process.

“When these events are seen side by side, there are some analysts in Armenia who think that all of this indicates that Azerbaijan is step-by-step refusing and walking away from the agreements reached among us and international platforms.

“But so long as Azerbaijan has not declared that it is withdrawing its signature from the Sochi and Prague declarations, then it’s very clear that Armenia and Azerbaijan recognise each other’s territorial integrity based on the 1991 Almaty declaration, and any statement that contradicts this logic is not legitimate.”

That is a long winded way of saying Mr Aliyev ought to keep his word. Does he trust Mr Aliyev to actually do so?

“I put my trust in God. And I think that every country that respects itself must follow the commitments it has undertaken.”

Much of the tension focuses on Nakhchivan, an Azerbaijani enclave bordering Turkey, Iran and Armenia.

Baku wants to create a road and rail link to Nakhchivan along Armenia’s 25-mile border with Iran exclusively under the “neutral” control of Russian border guards.

Armenia, which has promised to provide access between Nakhchivan and mainland Azerbaijan, fears a trap that would force it to relinquish control of its southern border.

Mr Pashinyan has made a counter offer based on a general reopening of all transport corridors in the region. So far, Mr Aliyev has dismissed the proposal as unworkable.

The peace process here has implications for dozens of small countries in the new age of great-power confrontation.

Before the 2020 war, Armenia assumed that its membership of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation would keep it safe.

But Russia did not come to Armenia’s aid in 2020, and Russian peacekeepers also failed to stop Azerbaijan blockading a road into Karabakh in the aftermath. They stood aside again when it launched its final assault on the area in September 2023.

Mr Pashinyan insists Russia remains a valued security partner but he has barely concealed a sense of betrayal.

He has publicly said the country can no longer exclusively rely on Russia and should forge security relationships with the United States and France as well.

The realignment has drawn stern rebukes from Moscow.

In October 2023 the Russian state news agency TASS even quoted an anonymous official comparing Mr Pashinyan to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky (Mr Pashinyan said he had not seen that report and would not comment on anonymous threats).

He insists that does not mean making a choice between Russia and the West, despite the fallout of the war in Ukraine.

“Look, when the Ukraine war had just started I was interviewed by CNN and I said, in the Ukraine situation, we are not Russia’s ally. And that’s the reality. But I want to also tell you that with the US or France or other partners, our security cooperation is not targeted against our other security sector partner.

“Now, our partners may have concerns about the relationship with them, or how the relationship with them could influence their security agendas. And that’s an issue we’re trying to manage by utmost transparently speaking with our partners about their shared agendas,” he said.

Nato membership, an obvious red line for Russia, “is not a question we have discussed or are discussing”.

He also suggests Armenia may rethink its membership of the CSTO. “There are some discussions in Armenia as to whether or to what extent the alliance-based strategy is consistent with Armenia’s longer term interests,” he said.

Particularly contentious is the Armenian parliament’s ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which finally came into force on Feb 1.

Russia called the move an “unfriendly” step and it is not hard to see why: the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over war crimes allegedly committed in Ukraine.

Mr Pashinyan declined to say whether Armenian police would act on the warrant if Putin happened to visit.

The decision to join the Rome Statute “serves to improve the level of security of Armenia. As to the legal subtleties. I cannot at the moment carry out legal analysis because that’s the job of the lawyers,” he said.

“Let me break a secret to you. After 2018 Armenia has had extensive democratic reforms. And I don’t decide whom to arrest and whom not to arrest.

“And as I said, Armenia as a responsible state must remain committed to all of her international commitments, including the commitments that it has in the relationship with the Russian Federation and commitments that the country has in international relations,” he said.

But in this era of realpolitik, Armenia has painfully few cards to play.

Moscow may be the regional super power and traditional ally but is militarily overstretched in Ukraine and diplomatically isolated abroad to prioritise enforcing its CSTO commitments.

More important to Putin is his relationship with Turkey’s Recep Tayip Erdogan, Azerbaijan’s key backer and also the only Nato leader in a position to cause him serious trouble on the Black Sea.

Turkey’s foreign minister said last week that Mr Putin was expected to visit Turkey soon to discuss the Ukraine grain initiative. It would be his first visit to a Nato country since he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.

The West may be the natural protector of a pro-European democracy under threat, but it too is preoccupied, and Washington and Brussels value their ties to Mr Aliyev and Mr Erdogan.

In July 2022,  in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union signed up to buy more gas from Azerbaijan. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, praised Mr Aliyev’s government as a “reliable” and “crucial” partner.

Mr Alieyev has also made himself useful in the grand standoff with Iran – so useful that Israeli firms reportedly supplied much of the weapons used in the final blitz on Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023.

It is an unenviable position for any leader to be in.

It gives Mr Pashinyan a unique perspective on the era of great-power confrontation and he has a warning for the rest of the world.

“I don’t want to give the impression the government of Armenia does not grasp how critical its own security problems are,” he said.

“We’re living in a world where no one can say what will happen tomorrow morning. If anyone were to think that in the global world they are more relaxed, or they should be any more relaxed than the government of the Republic of Armenia or the citizens of Armenia, they would be significantly wrong,” he warns.

“I’m saying this with full seriousness. In the last two years, and currently, the international community is discussing whether or not there will be a nuclear war,” he adds.

“My position is such that I have interactions with several potential sides to such a nuclear war. I think I know what a serious topic it is.

“In that sense, at least, Armenia is significantly safer and more secure, because I don’t think anyone is intending a nuclear strike on Armenia.”

Which brings us to his basic pitch: it is in everyone’s interests, regardless of where they stand on the world’s other grand confrontations, to make the peace process in the South Caucasus work.

“I know how hard it is, I know how difficult it is and what difficulties need to be overcome. And I will do my best for peace to be established in our region. And I will do that share of the work that concerns us. I’m hopeful that the other countries in our region will do the same.

“For some of our partners, we have some confidence that they will do that and for others, there isn’t so much confidence, but the core goal of our foreign policy is that.”

On 7 February 2024 the NSW Legislative Council considered a motion on genocide prevention.

Introduced by Liberal Party opposition Whip, the Hon Chris Rath, the motion called for the Upper House to acknowledge that 9 December 2023 marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and to honour the primary initiator of the convention, Dr Raphael Lemkin, who had been influenced by his studies of the Armenian Genocide and Jewish Holocaust.

The motion, according to Mr Rath, also called for the expansion of Holocaust genocide education, with the mandatory inclusion of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides in the curriculum, and the establishment of a genocide museum to create awareness about these genocides.

Approximately 1.5 million Armenians, 300,000 Assyrians, and 350,000 to 500,000 Greeks (including Pontic Greeks) were killed during the genocides committed by the Ottoman and Republican Turkish authorities in the early 20th Century.

A number of parliamentarians rose to speak to this important motion which received cross-party support.

The State Treasurer, the Hon Daniel Mookhey, confirmed that the NSW Government supports the motion and reminded the House that the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which was passed by the United Nations on 9 December 1948, was the first human rights treaty in the history of the UN.

Mr Mookhey recalled that the genocide convention was created as a way in which to hold the Nazis accountable for their actions and equally to establish the principle that those who commit the crime of genocide will be held to account by the international community.

The Treasurer informed the House that the NSW Education Standards Authority is currently consulting about the new history syllabuses, including updated context for the Holocaust and acknowledging other forms of genocide.  He also noted that First Nations people are campaigning for an updated version of the teaching curriculum to properly reflect the history and experiences of First Nations people following the arrival of the British.

Mr Mookhey concluded:

“Lots of people in the community are the victims of genocide or the descendants of victims of genocide … It is so important that we make sure we do not forget that history and that, again, we commemorate how great an achievement it was to establish the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”

Dr Amanda Cohn of the NSW Greens reminded the House that according to the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, a United States‑based NGO named in honour of Raphael Lemkin:

“Genocide is a crime in international law and is a permanent moral wound on the body of humanity. There is never a justification for perpetration of this crime.”

As the granddaughter of Holocaust refugees, Dr Cohn stated that the recognition of the Armenian genocide is important for not just Armenians, but “all of us”.  The Greens MP declared that this issue is not only one of principle but one that is personal for her and her family because formal recognition and remembrance of genocide, as well as education, are critical for healing and to ensure that genocide never happens again.

Dr Cohn also instanced the cases of other genocides, including the Rwandan and Tamil genocides, in the context of truth-telling today and pointed out that genocide is not just historical since everyone should be making an active effort to prevent it.

Finally, the Greens parliamentarian observed that the Lemkin Institute issues active genocide alerts when developments occur that it believes show clear signs of genocide in process and cited recent alerts issued regarding the Amhara and Tigray regions of Ethiopia, Sudan, Artsakh (the expulsion of the indigenous Armenian population by Azerbaijan forces) and, most recently, Palestine.

In relation to the current conflict in the Middle East, Dr Cohn also referred to the recent decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ]) which ruled that some acts committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the genocide convention.

Dr Cohn reminded the House that the ICJ has ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the genocide convention, ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts in Gaza, prevent and punish any incitement to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, preserve evidence related to any allegations of genocide, and improve the humanitarian situation for Palestinian civilians, as well as calling on Hamas and other armed groups to immediately release hostages without conditions.

In conclusion, Dr Cohn stated that in the context of the UN Convention on genocide, Australia has responsibilities to prevent genocide in Gaza.  “Never again” means never again for anyone.

The Hon. Susan Carter, the Shadow Assistant Minister for Attorney General in the Liberal Party, noted that “Genocide” is a word which should be said slowly to give the mind a chance to catch up and understand the enormity of this concept. She added that one cannot visit the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or the genocide memorial at Swallow’s Fortress in Yerevan without being overwhelmed at the sad and senseless loss of life, at the evil which drove this, and at the indifference of others who looked the other way or allowed it to occur.

Ms Carter ended:

“We need to speak of this annihilation, because if we do not name evil, acknowledge that evil has occurred, and teach our children to eschew evil, history teaches us we will repeat it.”

The Hon. Mark Buttigieg, Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations, Work Health and Safety, and Multiculturalism, informed the House that UN Convention on Genocide was passed just prior to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and noted that the Chifley Labor Government, and Foreign Minister H. V. Evatt specifically, were hugely significant in the passage of both the Universal Declaration and the Genocide Convention.

“I note that the Government recognises the enduring impact genocides continue to have today on people in our communities and the need for students to recognise the horrific nature of genocides … These are scars that are left on populations for generations and generations. It is very important that we recognise these genocides when they occur. “

Mr Buttigieg concluded by urging that we should recognise that genocide can occur in any nation and across any peoples, and should be called out for what it is and condemned, but recognised officially as an international war crime.

The Hon. Jacqui Munro (Liberal) noted that the definition of genocide in the convention means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a)Killing members of the group;

(b)Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d)Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e)Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Liberal MP also noted that there are other acts which are punishable, including direct and public incitement to commit genocide, as part of the UN’s mandate and the demands of our international rules-based order.

Ms Munro stressed the importance of remembrance through institutions such as the Sydney Jewish Museum in Sydney – the Holocaust Museum – and that the same thing should be done with other genocides, including the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides.

The NSW Parliamentary Secretary for Emergency Services, the Hon Anthony D’Adam, rose to inform the House that the timing of the motion was appropriate because of the events in Gaza but also to remind his parliamentary colleagues of the Rwandan genocide, the Bosnian genocide, the Tamil genocide and the Khmer genocide.

According to Mr D’Adam, the genocide convention is a landmark in the evolution of international law and a step to prevent the horrors that occurred during the Second World War, the Holocaust of the European Jewish community, from ever happening again.  Unfortunately, the world has not heeded the cry of “never again”, as evidenced by the genocidal atrocities in Rwanda, Srebrenica in Bosnia and the Sri Lankan Tamil genocide.

The Parliamentary Secretary also reminded the House that there have been 28,000 deaths in Gaza and, noting the ICJ’s decision that found that Israel is at risk of perpetrating a genocide, stated that according to the Genocide Convention in order to liberate human kind from this scourge, international cooperation is required.  According to Mr D’Adam, that means that when genocide is occurring countries like Australia and the rest of the world must take action to prevent it.

The final speaker to the motion, the Hon. Stephen Lawrence (Labor), who as a barrister once worked in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, declared that it is so important that we teach our children in our schools about the crime of genocide, not only as an _expression_ of human solidarity but also in light of Australia’s own history.  Mr Lawrence recalled that in 1938 the Australian Government’s chief delegate to a conference dealing with refugees from Nazi Germany incredulously told the conference that Australia was not desirous of importing a race problem by encouraging any scheme for large-scale foreign migration.

Mr Lawrence concluded saying that in the context of the motion for genocide recognition it is also important to reflect on contemporary events.  He specifically referred to what he described as the “profoundly moving” judgment of the ICJ and noted that even the ad hoc judge appointed by the Israeli Government concurred with the court’s majority on the issue of provisional measures dealing with incitement to genocide. Whilst noting that the ICJ judgement was concerned with questions of prima facie evidence Mr Lawrence concluded that there is no real question that incitement to genocide has been occurring in Israel by persons of high authority, not to mention the broader question as to whether the mass civilian death in Gaza is, on allegation, a grave breach of international humanitarian law or genocide.

Those contemporary events speak to our common humanity.

In reply, Chris Rath thanked all members who contributed to this important debate, stating that it is incredibly important to acknowledge the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides and to enshrine those genocides in curriculums.

The catalyst for the motion, the Joint Justice Initiative, is a coalition of Armenian, Assyrian and Greek community groups in Australia that lobby for the recognition of these genocides.  For a genocide denied is a genocide repeated.

During the Joint Justice Advocacy Week in Parliament House in Canberra in early 2023, Associate Professor Dr Melanie O’Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and a leading genocide scholar, declared:

“It is crucial that Australia recognise the genocide of the indigenous Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic populations of the Ottoman Empire by the Ottoman and Republican governments.  It is important to acknowledge the reality of the crimes committed against the victims, survivors and their descendants – some of whom are Australian citizens – and to contribute to the prevention of future genocides.”

As the Lemkin Institute also reminds us, Raphael Lemkin’s broad vision of genocide prevention is a never-ending process of building peace through the rule of law, the historical recognition of victims, and scholarship and practice that is guided by an ethics of the human universal and involves de-escalating identity-based conflicts, working to dislodge deeply rooted conflicts, and building peaceful, inclusive, and just societies.

The NSW Legislative Council is to be congratulated for its forthright debate and unanimous support of the motion for genocide recognition.  It is also a timely reminder of the need to recognise and educate about the unspeakable evils of all genocides and crimes against humanity, from the first genocides of the 20th century to the Holocaust and sadly continuing to the present day.

George Vardas is the Arts and Culture Editor of Greek City Times and is a member of the Multicultural NSW Advisory Board.  He is also a member of the Joint Justice Initiative.  The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

Ahmed Al-Qarmalawi constructed his fifth novel on a vision passed from one generation to another about a hidden treasure in the form of seven tall clay jars full of gold, buried underneath the family house and guarded by a fallen hair monkey, which will give it to the rightful descendent, named Mohammed, among seven descendants bearing the same name!

It is not just a novel but rather a family saga, intertwined with the efforts of the narrator Ahmed, who works as an engineer like the author, to emigrate from Egypt to Australia after the failure of the 2011 Revolution.

This thinly veiled semi-autobiography is so packed with numerous characters to a confusing extent and comprises some vignettes with varying degrees of quality. One unforgettable vignette is when Nashaat, an army officer, who is almost one of the narrator’s grandfathers, returned wounded from Palestine during WWI, taking full pride in defeating the Turks. Being a Turk, his mother had ambivalent feelings towards this; she was happy for her son’s return. At the same time, he trounced those who are symbolically his forefathers! Another vignette was when an aunt of the narrator’s father brought from between her legs a bat which she caught and which deprived the narrator of sleep in the country house.

A third one, the most harrowing episode, is when the Cairo Police Commissioner Sedqi Bek, who is also almost one of the narrator’s grandfathers, went to his brother-in-law’s palace along with a company of soldiers, tied him, killed his horses, and seized his precious horse in revenge for strangulating Neamat, his sister, to satisfy his sadistic desires. The bright side is when Neamat, who was below 18 years old when she got married and remained unmarried until her death, resided in the country house (the one with the aforementioned vision). During his life, her father bequeathed her a large piece of land, upon which she built this house. Then, she started to rent lands to peasants and thrived when her nephew came and managed these lands.

After that comes the love affair of epic proportions between Nashaat, the wounded army officer, and Lilit, a neighbouring Armenian girl, who fled with her mother after the reported Armenian genocide in Turkey. His commanding officer gave him a gift: two telephone sets, a leftover from the British troops at the end of WWI, which was a wonder at the time. He used them in talking to his lover after training her how to use them. He used to accompany her to Port Said by train with all his military regalia pretending to be a high-ranking military officer escorting a princess visiting the city, which became a reception point for Armenians fleeing the Turks. Although Armenians were wary of Nashaat, being a Muslim officer, he gained their trust when he recounted his victory against the Turks. Unfortunately, this affair did not end in marriage because the Armenian Orthodox priest, who wanted to terminate this relationship, told Lilit to ask Nashaat to convert to Christianity.   

A tragic episode occurred when one of Mohammed's family burnt down the hut of Ephraim, a Jewish photographer, which he used as a studio, in revenge for refusing to return photos he took for Zubeida, his beloved cousin. Ephraim instructed a group of Jewish youth to start a brawl with Mohammed, through harassing his sister, which resulted in losing an eye.

Zubeida, who used to look down upon her female cousins viewing herself as much more refined and who eagerly wanted to be a fashion model in the West, was an enchanting beauty who did not care a bit for her cousin’s love. She got married to Shaher, a truly smart engineer, who provided her with a velvet dreamlike life, only to be shaken to the core by his premature death. She never got married again!

On the other hand, Fadel, Mohammed’s father, suffered a psychological breakdown when his wife humiliated him for not executing a severe punishment upon his son’s attackers. As a result, he left the house and used to return to it occasionally. He became a Sufi and led an ascetic life, roaming about many mosques.

Being the only child, Ahmed, the narrator, was torn between leaving his mother and father, who are cousins, and his home country while his financial fortunes were dwindling monthly and emigrating. He was also struggling with his wife and father-in-law, who was a former high-ranking police officer and viewed the 2011 Revolution as a conspiracy against the state.

Ahmed was also striving to persuade his wife of the idea of emigration, which he finally decided to embark on solely.   

The final pages show that the hidden treasure was the oil discovered and excavated by the government in the family land!

As a conclusion, the number of successes in this family saga is outweighed by the tragedies. Although the novel is comprised of 43 chapters, the author put number 44 on a blank page, alluding to an open end or denoting that the narrator/author did not write it because he did not live it to relate it!

Al-Qarmalawi won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2017 for his novel “Summer Rains.”

The novelist was so keen to tell the story apparently of his family at the expense of a robust novel. One felt that certain episodes should have been excluded totally or at least abridged.