Friday,
EU Alarmed By Tighter Azeri Blockade Of Karabakh
Armenia - EU parliamentarians and monitors visit a section of the Armenian-Azeri
border adjacent to Lachin corridor, June 21, 2023.
The European Union expressed serious concern on Friday over the tightening of
Azerbaijan’s seven-month blockade of the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh
to Armenia.
Baku stopped on June 15 the movement through the Lachin corridor of humanitarian
convoys organized by the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Karabakh and the
International Committee of the Red Cross. The move followed a shootout near an
Azerbaijani checkpoint controversially set up in late April by a bridge over the
Hakari river, the starting point of the Lachin corridor.
Armenia said its border guards opened fire to stop Azerbaijani servicemen
manning the checkpoint from placing an Azerbaijani flag on adjacent Armenian
territory. Azerbaijan insisted, however, that they did not cross into Armenia.
“The near total blockage of the Lachin corridor, in place since 15 June is very
worrying,” Nabila Massrali, the EU’s foreign policy spokeswoman, said in a
statement. “It directly threatens the livelihoods of the local population and
raises serious fears of a potential humanitarian crisis.”
The EU was also alarmed by heightened tensions along the Armenian-Azerbaijani
border and the Karabakh “line of contact.”
“Following the series of recent high-level meetings, the EU continues to be
engaged at the highest political level to help defuse these tensions and find
mutually acceptable solutions,” added Massrali.
Her statement came two days after a group of European Parliament members and the
head of the EU Delegation in Yerevan, Andrea Wiktorin, joined EU monitors for a
patrol near the Hakari bridge. Nathalie Loiseau, who led the visiting
parliamentary delegation, demanded afterwards an immediate end to the “illegal”
blockade.
The Azerbaijani side showed on Friday no signs of planning to lift it. A video
released by Karabakh’s leadership showed that Azerbaijani security personnel
placed concrete road blocks on the bridge, making renewed traffic through the
corridor even more difficult.
Baku Rules Out Extra Security Guarantees For Karabakh
• Heghine Buniatian
• Artak Khulian
Azerbaijani border guards set up a checkpoint in the Lachin corridor, April 26,
2023.
Azerbaijan has made clear that it will not agree to any special arrangements for
guaranteeing the rights and security of Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian
population.
In an interview with Reuters news agency published on Friday, Azerbaijani
Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov also indicated that Armenia should make more
concessions in addition to recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh.
“The most fundamental is the following: this is an internal, sovereign issue,”
he said. “The Azerbaijan constitution and a number of international conventions
to which Azerbaijan is party provide all the necessary conditions in order to
guarantee the rights of this population."
Yerevan has been pressing for an “international mechanism” of dialogue between
Baku and the Karabakh Armenians during ongoing talks on an Armenian-Azerbaijani
peace treaty. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Thursday again called for the
launch of such a mechanism while continuing to accuse Baku of “ethnic cleansing”
in Karabakh.
Pashinian pledged to recognize Karabakh as a part of Azerbaijani after a recent
meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held in Brussels. That was
condemned by Karabakh’s leadership and the Armenian opposition. They say the
restoration of Azerbaijani rule would only force the Karabakh Armenians to flee
the territory.
Bayramov, who is due to hold another round of negotiations with his Armenian
counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan in Washington next week, noted with satisfaction
that Pashinian is the first Armenian leader to have made such a statement. But,
he said, Armenia should also take “some practical steps” to build on progress in
the peace talks and make peace with Azerbaijan. He did not specify those steps.
Russia - Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov attends talks with
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Armenia's Foreign Minister Ararat
Mirzoyan in Moscow, May 19, 2023.
Despite that progress, tensions along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and “the
line of contact” around Karabakh have steadily increased over the last few
weeks, with the sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire on a
virtually daily basis.
Karabakh’s army said that Azerbaijani forces fired at its frontline positions
throughout Thursday, wounding one of its soldiers. It also accused them of
targeting the tractor of a Karabakh farmer who cultivated agricultural land
outside the town of Chartar.
The Karabakh police said separately that Azerbaijani troops opened fire at a
civilian house in another village and damaged its roof on Thursday.
The Azerbaijani military regularly claims to shoot at tractors to stop Karabakh
Armenian forces from fortifying their positions. The authorities in Stepanakert
dismiss this as a smokescreen for justifying systematic Azerbaijani gunfire at
Karabakh farmers.
Following a June 15 shooting incident in the Lachin corridor, Azerbaijan
completely halted relief supplies to Karabakh through the sole road connecting
the disputed region to Armenia. Karabakh had received limited amounts of food,
fuel and medicine from Russian peacekeepers and the International Committee of
the Red Cross since Baku blocked commercial traffic through the corridor last
December.
Armenia’s Top Investigator Accused Of Torturing Suspect
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenia - Argisthi Kyaramian, head of Armenia's Investigative Committee, meets
with the U.S. ambassador in Yerevan, .
A former political activist has accused the head of Armenia’s Investigative
Committee, Argishti Kyaramian, of torturing and threatening to kill him
following his arrest last week.
The man, Tigran Arakelian, was detained on June 17 on charges of blackmailing
state officials to extort money from them. The Investigative Committee has not
yet named those officials.
In a video message posted on social media late on Thursday, Arakelian claimed
that senior law-enforcement officials, including Kyaramian, beat him up in the
office of the head of the committee’s Yerevan division.
“I was subjected to beating, verbal abuse and threats to my family,” said the
suspect, who is currently under house arrest. “They told me that ‘you’re not
going to see your wife and children anymore, a car will run over you, your home
will be set on fire at night, something will happen to your loved ones because
we are going to eliminate you together with your family.’ That was said by none
other than Argishti Kyaramian.
“Argishti Kyaramian met me twice that day and during both meetings I was
tortured, tortured by an electric shock gun. They poured water on me and started
burning various parts of my body with the electric shock gun.”
Arakelian did not say what his interrogators wanted him to say or do. He said he
will reveal that later on.
Armenia - Former political activist Tigran Arakelian.
The Investigative Committee flatly denied the allegations on Friday. “We do not
comment on baseless statements made out of thin air,” said a spokesman for the
law-enforcement agency.
Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General pledged, meanwhile, to look into the
latest allegations of torture facing the country’s law-enforcement authorities.
Human rights activists say that ill-treatment of criminal suspects remains
widespread despite sweeping law-enforcement reforms promised by Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian’s government.
Arakelian was already arrested in 2015 and subsequently convicted of
blackmailing two Armenian parliamentarians. He had already spent two years in
prison for his role in a 2011 violent clash between several police officers and
opposition activists.
Arakelian used to be a well-known member of former President Levon
Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress (HAK). Incidentally, Pashinian was
also actively involved in Ter-Petrosian’s opposition movement until falling out
with the ex-president in 2012.
Kyaramian, 32, is now widely regarded as one of the prime minister’s trusted
lieutenants, having held five high-level positions in the Armenian security
apparatus and government since Pashinian came to power in 2018. He previously
worked as a police officer and prosecutor.
PACE Also Urges Lifting Of Karabakh’s Blockade
France - A session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the 46-nation Council of
Europe, Strasbourg, January 24, 2023.
The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) has called on Azerbaijan
to reopen the sole road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh Armenia and unblock
electricity and gas supplies to the Armenian-populated region.
In a resolution adopted late on Thursday, the PACE deplored the December 2022
“interruption of the free and safe passage through the Lachin corridor and the
subsequent deliberate cutting of electricity and gas supplies to the region.”
It said Baku should “urgently” comply with a ruling handed down by the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) in February. The UN court ordered the
Azerbaijani government to “take all measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded
movement of persons, vehicles, and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both
directions.”
“The Assembly stresses that the current situation is not sustainable and may
well lead to the Armenian population being forced to leave their homes and
communities if there is no resolution to the conflict,” reads the PACE
resolution adopted by 48 votes to 16.
“In this context, it urgently calls for addressing the issues of the rights and
security of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh through dialogue between
Baku and Khakendi/Stepanakert and a neutral international involvement in any
peace implementation mechanism to be put in place,” it says.
Such a mechanism is strongly supported by Armenia but opposed by Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said last month that the Karabakh Armenians
“will either live under Azerbaijani rule or leave” their homeland.
The PACE resolution does not mention Baku’s decision to completely block the
movement of special humanitarian convoys through the Lachin corridor which
followed a shooting incident there on June 15. The move aggravated the shortages
of food, medicine and other essential items in Karabakh.
Paul Gavan, an Irish lawmaker who drafted the resolution, acknowledged and
criticized the tightening of the blockade during a PACE debate that preceded the
adoption of the text. Gavan cited information received from European Union’s
monitoring mission deployed along Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan.
The EU as well as the United States and Russia have repeatedly called for an end
to the Azerbaijani blockade. Baku has ignored these appeals.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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