Author: Jane Topchian

The Guardian, UK

Oct 3 2023

Pjotr Sauer in Yerevan

Armenia’s parliament has voted to join the international criminal court (ICC), obliging the former Soviet republic to arrest Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, if he were to visit the country.

Tuesday’s decision will further strain relations with Moscow, Armenia’s traditional ally. Ties are already badly damaged over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine and Azerbaijan’s recapture of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Kremlin last week warned Armenia that its decision to join the ICC, which has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children, was “extremely hostile”.

Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, has tried to reassure Russia that his country is only addressing what it says are war crimes committed by Azerbaijan in the long-running conflict with its neighbour, and is not aiming at Moscow.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, on Tuesday described the Armenian decision to join the ICC as “inappropriate … from the point of view of our bilateral relations”.

Moscow “absolutely disagrees with … Pashinyan’s words that Armenia has decided to accede to the Rome statute [which established the ICC] because the tools of the CSTO [the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization] and Armenian-Russian partnership were not enough to ensure the country’s security”, he said.

“The Armenian side doesn’t have mechanisms better than those, and we are sure about that,” he said.

Pashinyan, in a speech last weekend to mark Armenia’s independence day, said “the security systems and the allies we have relied on for many years” were “ineffective”, and that the “instruments of the Armenian-Russian strategic partnership” were “not enough to ensure Armenia’s external security”.

Peskov did not confirm whether Putin would avoid travelling to Armenia as a result of the parliament’s decision, but indicated that could be the case: “Of course, we wouldn’t like the president to have to abstain from visits to Armenia for any reasons.”

Russia, with a military base in Armenia, has long been its security guarantor, including managing tensions over Nagorno-Karabakh, but as Azerbaijan launched its offensive on the mountainous breakaway region, Moscow made clear its troops had no intention of intervening.

As Azerbaijani troops surrounded Nagrono-Karabkah, Pashinyan, criticised Moscow and questioned the effectiveness of the 2,000 Russian troops deployed since 2020 to keep the peace in the region.

Richard Giragosian, the head of the Regional Studies Centre in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, said the country’s decision to ratify the founding treaty of the ICC was the latest sign that Pashinyan was attempting to reduce Moscow’s influence.

“The ICC ratification by Armenia is mainly motivated by its desire to prepare legal challenges against Azerbaijan. But it also sends a clear message to Moscow,” he said. “It is part of a consistent escalation in measures taken by Armenia to stand up for itself and challenge its relationship with Moscow … Yerevan is seeking to diversify its security.”

Last month, Yerevan hosted US troops for an unprecedented joint military exercise. It has also sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine, delivered personally by Pashinyan’s wife, Anna Hakobyan.

France’s foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, flew to Armenia on Tuesday to assess the country’s urgent needs as it faced an influx of refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh and the risk of Azerbaijani military operations on its territory, diplomats said.

Putin’s inability to travel to Armenia, a country he last visited in 2022, is a glaring symbol of his waning influence in the South Caucasus.

The Russian leader skipped the Brics summit in South Africa in August amid speculation he could be detained under the ICC warrant.

“Russia’s role as a provider of security in its near-abroad has been severely diminished as a result of its disastrous war against Ukraine,” Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, in Berlin, wrote in the Financial Times recently. “The destabilising effects will continue to be felt across the vast Eurasian landmass.”

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan continues to arrest and charge Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian leadership after its takeover of the region.

On Tuesday, Baku announced it had arrested two former heads of the breakaway region as well as the former parliament speaker. Azerbaijani state media said all three men had been transferred to Baku.

A day earlier, Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general, Kamran Aliyev, announced that the country had opened criminal cases against 300 separatist officials.

Last week, Azerbaijani border police detained Ruben Vardanyan, a prominent billionaire banker and philanthropist, who briefly held a top political job in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Sept 22 2023

Russian peacekeepers with fleeing Armenians at Stepanakert airport (Photo: AFP via Getty)

Sept 6 2023

Drills will prepare units for international peacekeeping missions, says Yerevan, as its ties with Moscow appear increasingly strained.

Armenia is set to host a joint military exercise with the United States next week, a development that Russia said was cause for concern.

The Armenian Defence Ministry said on Wednesday the purpose of the September 11-20 Eagle Partner 2023 drills was to prepare its forces to take part in international peacekeeping missions.

“Within the framework of preparation for peacekeeping missions, units preparing for international peacekeeping operations frequently participate in similar joint exercises and trainings in partner countries,” the ministry said in a statement.

A US military spokesperson said 85 American soldiers and 175 Armenians would take part. He said the Americans – including members of the Kansas National Guard which has a 20-year-old training partnership with Armenia – would be armed with rifles and would not be using heavy weaponry.

Earlier this year, Armenia refused to host military drills by the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a Russian-led alliance of post-Soviet countries, reflecting Yerevan’s growing tensions with Moscow.

Despite the small scale of this week’s exercise, the Kremlin said it would be watching closely.

“Of course, such news causes concern, especially in the current situation. Therefore, we will deeply analyse this news and monitor the situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Russia has a military base in Armenia and sees itself as the pre-eminent power in the South Caucasus region, which until 1991 was part of the Soviet Union.

It maintains a peacekeeping force in the region to uphold an agreement that ended a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020, the second they have fought since the Soviet collapse.

But Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a weekend interview with an Italian newspaper that Russia had failed to protect Armenia against what he called continuing aggression from oil-rich Azerbaijan.

He suggested that Russia’s war in Ukraine meant it was unable to meet Armenia’s security needs.

Peskov told reporters on Tuesday he disagreed with Pashinyan’s remarks.

“Russia is an absolutely integral part of this region,” he said. “Russia plays a consistent, very important role in stabilising the situation in this region … and we will continue to play this role.”

The tensions between Moscow and Yerevan are rooted in Armenia’s conflicts with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region which lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Yerevan since a separatist war there ended in 1994.

Pashinyan has been increasingly critical of Russian peacekeepers in recent months, accusing them of failing to secure free transit along a corridor linking Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Sept 7 2023

People visit a cemetery on the day of the Armenian nationwide mourning for those killed in a military conflict over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Yerevan, Armenia, Dec. 19, 2020. (OSV News photo/Vahram Baghdasaryan, Photolure via Reuters)

A U.S. lawmaker and a Catholic bishop are calling for action to end a months-long blockade that has left some 120,000 ethnic Armenians at risk of what he and other experts are calling “genocide by starvation.”

“It’s now a three-alarm fire that’s getting worse by the moment,” said Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, speaking as he chaired a Sept. 6 emergency hearing of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. The session followed a similar one led by Smith on June 21.

For the past nine months, Azerbaijan has closed the only road leading from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh (known in Armenian by its ancient name, Artsakh), a 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. Attempts by the International Red Cross to deliver aid have been rebuffed.

“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 in a recent interview, ahead of a Sept. 1 webinar presentation on the issue for the Institute of Catholic Culture.

That was the consensus among speakers at the Sept. 6 hearing, which was co-hosted by Democratic Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts and featured expert witnesses Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who served as the first chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court from 2003-2012; and David L. Phillips, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and director of Columbia University’s Artsakh Atrocities Project.

Smith blasted U.S. inaction on the Azerbaijani blockade, saying that a “response in bland bureaucratic language does not count, not when people are being subjected to genocide.”

He announced plans to introduce a bill for the “Nagorno-Karabakh Human Rights Act,” and opened the Sept. 6 session by noting his long-running concerns, dating back to at least 2013, about human rights abuses under Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev.

Moreno-Ocampo reiterated his conclusions from his Aug. 7 report, stating that the blockade violated Article II(c) of the 1948 Genocide Convention — to which the U.S. is a signatory — by “creating conditions to destroy people.”

He noted that declarations of genocide are often obscured, as “normally people believe genocide requires many persons dying, killings, gas chambers.”

In contrast, “one form (of genocide) requires zero victims,” said Moreno-Ocampo, since the terms of the Genocide Convention only require that one condition be deliberately violated before the signatories’ duty to prevent and punish genocide is invoked.

At the same time, “the issue, and normally the most difficult issue, is the intentions” of the offending nation, he said.

Moreno-Ocampo noted that President Aliyev’s reinforcement of the blockade after U.S. requests to end it indicated an intent to destroy those trapped in the enclave.

Most urgent is “to prevent the harm for these 120,000 people,” he said.

Echoing his Aug. 7 report, Moreno-Ocampo said that U.S. failure to recognize the situation as genocide and respond accordingly “could be considered complicity.”

“Stop the denial. Recognize the genocide,” he said.

In his testimony, Phillips documented a long list of atrocities by Azerbaijan against the region’s residents, describing them as “actions to erase the Armenian physical, religious and cultural presence in Artsakh and eventually the Republic of Armenia, which has now been whittled down to a fraction of all of its Christian population and churches.”

He pointed to satellite documentation of these efforts, which are chronicled by Cornell University’s Caucasus Heritage Watch initiative.

Phillips said the Artsakh Atrocities Project he leads has collected “information on Azerbaijan’s systematic effort to drive Armenians from their homeland through killings, ethnic cleansing and deportations,” thereby constituting “crimes against humanity.”

He noted the “numerous verified cases of Azeri soldiers mutilating dead bodies, beheading and executing both combatants and civilians, and using banned weapons such as cluster bombs and white phosphorus gas” during a 2020 war launched by Azerbaijan on the enclave.

That war — in which 3,000 Azerbaijani and 4,000 Armenian soldiers were killed — had been preceded by a 1992-1994 struggle between Armenia and Azerbaijan for control of the region, which had declared its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Some 30,000 were killed and more than 1 million displaced in that conflict. 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).

Philips said Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor ultimately “constitutes a second Armenian genocide,” referencing the 1915-1916 slaughter and starvation of up to 1.2 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. The atrocities were the basis for lawyer Raphael Lemkin’s development of the term “genocide.”

He also noted Azerbaijan’s refusal to comply with a February 2022 order by the International Court of Justice to ensure “unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions,” as well as calls from “international leaders such as the U.N. Secretary General, the U.S. Secretary of State, and the President of France” to abide by the order.

“History shows that appeasement exacerbates consequences,” he warned. “A world order to which Americans aspire requires a response when crimes against humanity are committed, lest perpetrators conclude that they can escape criminal prosecution, asset freezes and travel bans.”

With the area surrounded by Muslim-majority Azerbaijan, the blockade amounts to “a pure and simple religious (and) ethnic cleansing,” Bishop Mouradian told OSV News in a Sept. 6 text message. “If the Armenians of Artsakh were Muslims, they wouldn’t be treated as they are now.”

Bishop Mouradian (who did not attend the hearing) said Congress “should without any delay put up a bipartisan human rights act … a law that should be put directly in practice to prevent yet another Armenian Genocide.

“That is inevitable if things continue like they are now,” he said.

https://catholicreview.org/lawmaker-bishop-urge-action-as-120000-armenians-face-ethnic-cleansing/

New Indian Express

Sept 10 2023

Published: 10th September 2023

NEW DELHI: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that he would hold talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan as tensions mount between Armenia and Ankara’s ally Azerbaijan.

Turkey has already condemned the election of a new president in Azerbaijan’s separatist Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh on Saturday.

Lawmakers in Nagorno-Karabakh’s parliament elected the head of the security council in the separatist government, Samvel Shahramanyan, by 22 votes to one.

Turkey has previously said it “does not recognise this illegitimate election which constitutes a violation of Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Speaking after the close of the G20 summit in New Delhi, Erdogan said: “I will have a telephone conversation, probably tomorrow, with Mr Pashinyan. What has been done in Karabakh is not appropriate. We cannot accept this”.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have traded accusations of cross-border attacks in recent months, and Armenia has warned of the risk of a fresh conflict, saying Azerbaijan was massing troops on the countries’ shared border and near Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated enclave was at the centre of two wars between the Caucasus neighbours.

Six weeks of fighting in autumn 2020 ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire that saw Armenia cede swathes of territory it had controlled for decades.

Tensions have risen again, with Yerevan accusing Baku of creating a humanitarian crisis by blocking traffic through the Lachin corridor — the only road linking Armenia to Armenian-populated Karabakh.

The two sides have been unable to reach a lasting peace settlement despite mediation efforts by the European Union, the United States and Russia.

Next week, Armenia will host joint military drills with US forces, the latest sign of the ex-Soviet republic’s drift from its traditional ally Russia.

Aug 31 2023

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