Author: Maral Takmazian

Anush Apetyan was a mother of three children. On Sept. 13, 2022, she was sent to the borders of Vayots Dzor province, Armenia, to defend her homeland following Azerbaijan’s attack against the sovereign and democratic nation.

The Azerbaijanis attacked deep inside Armenian territory with artillery and drones, its ground forces advancing into the town of Jermuk. Civilian homes were damaged and destroyed, and border posts were overrun, including the post where Apetyan was stationed.

In the aftermath, an Azerbaijani soldier published horrific visuals of the destruction on Telegram. He’s seen walking on a mountain of corpses of Armenian soldiers, kicking the heads of the dead and laughing. He directs his camera toward the naked corpse of a woman whose body has been mutilated. A severed finger is stuck in her mouth; a stone is stuck in one eye socket instead of an eyeball. He points the camera at her exposed pubic area.

The tortured body in the video is believed to be Apetyan, but it is so mangled it is possible the image shows a fellow female combatant who also died the same week.

Any Armenian who saw these images immediately got flashbacks to the bloody 44-day war Azerbaijan launched against the Armenian-inhabited region of Nagorno-Karabakh region. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations reported on the Azerbaijani war crimes, which included soldiers posting videos of themselves beheading old Armenian men

For those wondering how they missed this story, some context is needed to explain why it did not make headlines. Azerbaijan is rich in oil and gas. Any money that the ruling Aliyev family does not pocket goes into the military or is used to bribe European politicians. Equipped with the most modern weapon systems from Turkey—along with Turkish support—and Israel, no Azerbaijani advance could be stopped by Armenia alone.

Armenia is facing this conflict alone. The nation is being punished for its 2018 Velvet Revolution, which aimed to break the country free from its corrupt oligarchs and ruling elite. Armenia stretched out its hand to the West, alienating its old partner Russia, and like Ukraine, now finds itself suffering the consequences—but with far less media attention.

As recently as March, the European Parliament warned in a resolution that there was a systematic, country-wide policy of hostility toward the Armenians in Azerbaijan that was clearly promoted by the state. The efforts include historical revisionism, glorification of violence, dehumanisation of and hatred towards Armenians. None of this stopped the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, from travelling to the Azerbaijani capital Baku in July in search of gas suppliers. There she declared the ruling dictator to be a “trustworthy partner.” The EU seems to have traded a Russian dictator for one in Baku in its attempts to address the gas gap.

Meanwhile, many of Europe’s leading nations, including our own country, Germany, have failed to take a stance on the latest attacks. Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock claims her foreign policy has clear objectives that revolve around values and in the Bundestag she calls for a “clear stance” on the Russian attack on Ukraine. But she cannot find a single word to describe the latest attacks by Azerbaijan against Armenia.

The silence from many Western nations is deafening for the Armenians and emboldens Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and his cronies. Even after the United States called out Azerbaijan’s aggressive attacks, most of Europe remained silent.

Armenians are now on high alert because, despite a ceasefire, Aliyev has repeatedly made it clear that he does not accept either Armenia’s borders or its statehood. As early as 2015 he wrote on Twitter: “Armenia is not even a colony, it is not even worthy of being a servant.”

Anush Apetyan will not be able to help repel the next attack. However, the political leadership of the European Union and Germany can prevent other women and men from sharing her terrible fate. The EU leadership must decide whether the values they proclaim only matter when they coincide with geopolitical interests—or whether human rights and human dignity should be the basis of their actions.

Martin Sonneborn is a member of the European Parliament for Die PARTEI and a member of the parliamentary delegation for relations with the South Caucasus, Dustin Hoffmann is legal expert and heads his EU parliamentary office.

The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.

CORRECTION: The province where Anush Apetyan was killed is Vayots Dzor.

https://www.newsweek.com/horrors-other-war-europe-keep-growing-opinion-1747610 

During her state visit to the Armenian capital of Yerevan, the US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi unequivocally expressed support for Armenia, currently under attack by neighbouring Azerbaijan.

“Our meeting again had a particular importance to us because of the focus of security following illegal and deadly attacks by Azerbaijan on the Armenian territory,” said Speaker Pelosi during her state visit to the Armenian capital of Yerevan. “We strongly condemn those attacks, we and our delegation on behalf of Congress, which threatens prospects of much-needed peace agreement.”

Azerbaijan has been applying constant pressure on the majority-Armenian separatist Republic of Artsakh, in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan. But the most recent border clashes have claimed the lives of more than 200 people.

The Azeri Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a stark rebuke of the visit by Speaker Pelosi.

“The unsubstantiated and unfair accusations levelled by Pelosi against Azerbaijan are unacceptable,” reads the statement. “This is a serious blow to the efforts to normalise relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry claims that the current hostilities are a result of “a large-scale military provocation” by Armenia, and referred to Pelosi’s statements as “Armenian propaganda”, further accusing stating that “Pelosi is known as a pro-Armenian politician.”

There is some truth in these accusations, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed concerns over the hostilities and called for calm but did not assign blame, whereas Speaker Pelosi’s apportionment of blame is much more definitive.

According to the Azeri Foreign Ministry “It is unacceptable to transfer the domestic political intrigues on the US agenda and lobbying interests to the South Caucasus region through Armenia,” says Baku. “Such unilateral steps and baseless statements serve not to strengthen the fragile peace in the region, but, on the contrary, to escalate tensions.”

This is not the first visit of Speaker Pelosi to a potential hotspot. Early in August, she visited Taiwan, prompting an angry reaction from Beijing, which regards the island nations as its own province in rebellion.

Armenia is the only ally of Russia in the region of Southern Caucasus: Azerbaijan is not a member of the CSTO and is instead allied to Turkey, while Georgia has a generally positive relationship with Armenia, but has broken off its diplomatic relations with Russia since the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia. Therefore, Armenia relies heavily on Moscow for support. But the Kremlin’s inadequate support in the face of the Azeri incursion (the fourth one in the span of two years) opens up a possibility for Washington to lure Yerevan away from the Russian sphere of influence.