There is a striking difference between the media response to Azerbaijan’s 2020-2023 aggression against Armenians of Artsakh, which ended in a genocide, and the media’s reaction to Israel’s retaliation in Gaza after Hamas’ October 7th invasion, massacre, and hostage-taking. Most international media ignored Azerbaijan’s bombings, in 2020, of hospitals, schools, kindergartens, homes, and other non-military targets in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). They have also ignored the beheadings and mutilations that Azeri soldiers have committed against Armenians.
Artsakh is an Armenian republic in the South Caucasus. Indigenous Armenians lived there for millennia until Azerbaijan bombed and invaded their territory on 19-20 September 2023, forcing around 120,000 Armenians to flee for their lives. Azerbaijan claims the region because, in the 1920s, Stalin granted Artsakh to Soviet Azerbaijan as an autonomous oblast as part of his “divide and rule” strategy. However, Artsakh has never been part of an independent Azerbaijan; instead, it has historically been an integral part of Armenia. In fact, in 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union saw the creation of two independent and legally equal republics: Azerbaijan and Artsakh.
Since then, Azerbaijan’s aggression has been unceasing. The September bombardments were Azerbaijan’s second military assault against Artsakh since 2020. An earlier assault took place between 27 September and 9 November, 2020, during which Azerbaijan indiscriminately bombed civilian areas, including hospitals and schools, for 44 days. On 28 October 2020, news website EVN reported:
Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh, and the town of Shushi came under intensive shelling today by Azerbaijani forces. A maternity hospital in Stepanakert and other civilian infrastructure were heavily damaged. One civilian was killed and several others wounded including first responders of Artsakh’s State Service of Emergency Situations.
The Associated Press then released video footage showing the shelling of the maternity hospital in Stepanakert by Azeri military forces. Artak Beglaryan, a former state minister of Artsakh and at the time the region’s human rights ombudsman, went to the site of the bombed hospital and posted a video on his X (formerly Twitter) page:
My video message and introduction on the Azerbaijan’s today’s deliberate strike on the Republican medical center of Stepanakert, including maternity and child hospital. Intl community bears responsibility for these #WarCrimes as doesn’t stop them. #DontBeBlind
Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also issued a statement:
This war crime, which is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, customary law, clearly shows that Azerbaijan’s target in Artsakh is the people—infants, mothers, the elderly.
On 26 February 2021, Human Rights Watch issued a report entitled “Unlawful Attacks on Medical Facilities and Personnel in Nagorno-Karabakh: New Research on Three Incidents from 2020 Conflict,” in which they detailed events of the attacks:
Human Rights Watch documented multiple unlawful strikes on a public hospital in Martakert in September through November 2020, and an unlawful strike on a military hospital in the town’s outskirts in October …
Two doctors [of the Martakert Public Hospital] said that when the shelling began on September 27, staff moved all 39 patients, including children and mothers with newborn babies, to the basement. Those whose health allowed it were discharged that day, and the rest were promptly evacuated to Stepanakert…
On September 28, a group of five apparent Azerbaijani servicemen attacked an ambulance…, killing a military doctor, Sasha Rustamyan, 26, and injuring the driver and the accompanying Armenian army sergeant.
Despite these reports, few governments showed concern. Most mainstream media outlets did not even report on these unlawful military attacks against Armenian medical centers, patients, and medical professionals. Schools were also indiscriminately bombed by Azeri forces. The Human Rights Ombudsman of Artsakh issued a report on 9 November 2020, in which it documented Azeri attacks against Armenian children and schools:
Targetings of civilian objects have been deliberate and indiscriminate—strikes on communities have been recorded from the very first day of the offense. The attacks by the Azerbaijani armed forces on civilian households have put life and health of children, women, the elderly and the entire peaceful civilian population, as well as their property, schools and other civilian objects in real danger. Moreover, these assaults have not been tempered relative to other targets and have included the full use of air force, missiles, artillery, attack UAVs and even internationally prohibited weapons and methods …
Densely populated areas, including schools and kindergartens, have been indiscriminately targeted. The armed forces of Azerbaijan have been acting with clear intention to damage lives and health of the civilian population, including children. Based on preliminary data, 71 schools and 14 kindergartens … have suffered material damages from the shelling, rocket and air strikes by the Azerbaijani armed forces. As a result of the Azerbaijani attacks, all the 220 schools and 58 kindergartens were closed. Consequently, all the 23,978 children in Artsakh have been deprived of the Right to Education, the opportunity to attend school and 4,036 children of receiving preschool education.
During and after the war, many Armenians, both civilians and soldiers alike, were beheaded or mutilated. Many videos of the beheadings and mutilations were posted on social media by Azeri accounts. According to a report by Artsakh’s Human Rights Ombudsman, some examples include:
Yuri Asriyan, a resident of Azokh village, Hadrut region, could not leave his place of residence due to health problems. He was captured on October 21 by Azerbaijani troops who invaded the village. Later, in December 2020, a video was spread on the Internet, which contained the scene of Asriyan being beheaded. He repeatedly asked not to be beheaded in the name of ‘Allah’, but a soldier in the uniform of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces beheaded him. Asryan’s body was found on 21.01.2021.
Gennady Petrosyan, a resident of Madatashen village of Askeran region, returned to the village after evacuation on 27.10.2020 to pick up his remaining possesions. During the same period, Azeri soldiers in the village captured him and later in November posted a video on the Internet, which clearly shows Petrosyan being beheaded, and his body and amputated head placed next to the body of a pig.
Alvard Tovmasyan was born in 1963, lived in the village of Karin Tak in the Shushi region, and suffered from mental illness. Her body was found on 13.01.2021 as a result of search operations in the same village. Examination of her body revealed obvious signs of torture; her left ear and tongue were cut off. The corpse was identified by relatives and comparative examination of DNA samples.
The war was halted with an agreement signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, and brokered by Russia, on November 9, 2020. Yet, the Azeri aggression never stopped. During Azerbaijan’s illegal blockade that lasted from December 2022 to late September 2023, Armenians were besieged in their own land for nine months. They survived with very little food, medicine, or fuel. Then, on 19 September 2023, Azerbaijan again bombed Artsakh, invaded forcibly displaced the Armenian population, and arrested its political and military leaders. On October 19, Anahit Manasyan, the human rights ombudsman of Armenia, said, “Numerous bodies, including those of children and women, bearing signs of torture and mutilation, have been taken to Armenia from Artsakh.”
Many people regularly follow the news and international developments, but are unaware of the true scale of the 2020-23 Armenian genocide committed by Azerbaijan and its ally, Turkey. Azerbaijan’s two brutal wars, carpet bombings, siege starvation, beheadings, and mutilations of Armenians, and its violent targeting of hospitals and schools in Artsakh, should have made headlines in the West.
Despite the many crimes Azerbaijan has committed against Artsakh’s indigenous and peace-loving Armenians, there has been very little factual media coverage. The Western mainstream media has been mostly silent—perhaps even complicit with Azerbaijan. Their silence has helped Azerbaijan drive Armenians out of their ancestral homeland. Tens of thousands of Armenian families have lost their homes, left everything behind, and are now refugees struggling with economic, medical, and psychological problems.
The question demands an answer: Why have most Western media outlets been so blind and apathetic in response to the past three years of the Artsakh Genocide?