TV CHANNEL BBC TELLS ABOUT ARMENIANS’ LIVES IN NKR UNDER AZERBAIJAN’S PERMANENT THREATS
19:29 07/04/2015 >> POLITICS
The British TV channel BBC has made reportage from Nagorno Karabakh
Republic. Rayhan Demytrie, the reporter tells about the life of
a family living in the village Madagis, not far from the line of
contact with Azerbaijan. They live in a constant fear that Azerbaijan
may reactivate military operations.
As the article has it, fourteen-year-old Karen hides the stump of his
left hand in his pocket. His mother, Ludmila Bagdasaryan-Mirzoyan,
says that two years ago Karen found a live anti-aircraft shell in the
garden. The relic from the 1990s war with Azerbaijan exploded in his
hands. Ludmila often contemplates what the consequences of another
war would be.
“If there is another war, we will suffer, my children will suffer.
[Azerbaijan’s forces] won’t care whether we are guilty or not, they
will just think that we are Armenians and we have no right to exist,”
Ludmila says.
According to the reportage, after the collapse of the Soviet Union
Karabakh war broke out. An estimated 30,000 people were killed from
1992 to 1994. Despite a ceasefire of 20 years, the area is heavily
militarized.
It is also noted that Nagorno Karabakh has its own government,
universities, even an international airport, though in reality
Karabakh is isolated from the outside world. The airport sits empty
as the civil planes risk being shot down by Azerbaijan. Besides,
it is noted in the reportage that the children in the schools of NPR
are taught self-defense not to repeat Karen’s mistake.
As the second part of the reportage has it, the Armenian inhabitants
of Nagorno Karabakh call themselves citizens of the Artsakh Republic.
The territory has its own flag, an international airport, police
and armed forces, although regular Armenian soldiers serve on the
frontline.
It is stated in the article that Nagorno-Karabakh is isolated.
Financially and militarily it depends on Armenia. Its subjects hold
Armenian passports. And the international airport stands empty,
because Azerbaijan has threatened to shoot down any planes.
As the article reads, peace negotiations mediated by the Minsk Group,
under the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE),
have seen little progress.
“The first goal of the mediation is to keep the peace process alive
and the second goal is to prevent war,” says Richard Giragosian,
director of the Regional Studies Centre, a think tank based in the
Armenian capital, Yerevan.
Frustrated by the lack of a diplomatic solution, Azerbaijan’s
leadership has threatened to retake the territory militarily. Oil-rich
Azerbaijan has spent billions of US dollars on modern weaponry. And
most of the arms are supplied by Russia. That is deeply unpopular with
Armenia. It counts Russia as its strategic ally, and hosts Russia’s
only military base in the region.
“We are concerned that Russia, for all sorts of reasons, is selling
weapons to Azerbaijan. The problem is not the quality of the weaponry,
but the fact that an Armenian soldier standing at the border knows
he could be killed by Russian weapons,” the Armenian President,
Serzh Sargsyan, said at a recent public forum in Yerevan.
The territory’s de facto foreign minister, Karen Mirzoyan, says
that without their inclusion in the peace process, there will
be no resolution to the conflict. “When you withdraw NK from the
negotiation table, it’s very easy to say that it’s not a conflict for
self-determination, it’s just a territorial problem and it’s very
easy to show Armenia as an aggressor. But in reality this conflict
is about self-determination,” he told the journalist.
The demining organization HALO Trust fellow Yuri Shahramanyan told
BBC correspondent that their main goal is to prevent accidents.
“One of the main challenges is accessing minefields in Nagorno
Karabakh. There are hardly any roads, sometimes the roads have not
been used for more than 20 years, in winter some roads are covered
with snow, with mud and it’s impossible to drive. Karabakh is quite
mountainous and most of high grounds, hills and mountains have been
used as military positions. Normally armies would lay defensive
minelines in front of the positions and this is one of those,”
Shahramanyan said adding that they had cleared over 400 minefields,
and they had got another 127 to clear.
“Last year there was an increase of accidents. There have been 8
accidents, involving 11 casualties, of which two people have been
killed. It’s quite difficult to raise funds for Nagorno Karabakh
because Karabakh is unrecognized republic. It will be free of mines
one day and if there’s more funding available, we’ll be able to make
it free of mines even earlier,” Yuri Shakhramanyan highlighted.