Without international support for the safe return of Artsakh Armenians and justice for the crimes committed against them, a sustainable regional peace will be elusive, argued Artsakh Ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan and former State Minister Artak Beglaryan.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) Gegham Stepanyan and former State Minister Artak Beglaryan represented the Artsakh people’s inalienable rights, national interests and democratic aspirations at a Capitol Hill briefing featuring powerful remarks by Representatives Brad Sherman (D-CA) and James Costa (D-CA), and organized by the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) urged the Biden administration to provide U.S. defensive weapons to Armenia in response to Azerbaijan’s escalating war rhetoric at a Capitol Hill briefing with Artsakh representatives Gegham Stepanyan and Artak Beglaryan.

“We are here to demand the right of safe return of Artsakh’s refugees to their homes, homes that in many cases have been occupied by their families for hundreds and hundreds of years,” stated Rep. Sherman, who urged the enforcement of Section 907 restrictions on U.S. aid to Azerbaijan, sanctioning the Aliyev regime for the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh. Citing President Aliyev’s escalating rhetoric claiming Armenia’s capital Yerevan is Azerbaijani territory, Rep. Sherman urged the Biden administration to provide defensive military weapons to Armenia, “to avoid the next tragedy which is being planned in Baku.”  Rep. Sherman concluded his remarks with a message to President Aliyev, who claims that his main enemies are the Armenians of the world. “Well, I have news for you, Mr. Aliyev. Your main enemies are every person in the world who believes in democracy, who believes in human rights and who believes in justice.”

“We must hold the Azerbaijan government responsible for not only the ethnic cleansing but the cultural genocide,” stated Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA) at a Capitol Hill briefing with Artsakh representatives Gegham Stepanyan and Artak Beglaryan.

Condemning Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Artsakh, Rep. Costa noted, “We must do more” to provide U.S. humanitarian assistance to Artsakh’s forcibly displaced population through the foreign aid supplemental currently under consideration. “We must hold the Azerbaijan government responsible for not only the ethnic cleansing but the cultural genocide that they continue to attempt to implement as part of a systematic effort that has long been the history of Azerbaijan and their attitude toward the Armenian people and the culture and the religion.  The threats that Azerbaijan is now making toward Armenia, I believe, are serious and real, and therefore should be treated as such,” stated Rep. Costa.  He also called for concrete U.S. action to secure the return of Artsakh leaders and Armenian POWs illegally held hostage by Azerbaijan.

“Artsakh’s rights were center stage this week in Washington, D.C., as two of the Republic’s most eloquent voices – Artak Beglaryan and Gegham Stepanyan – made the case to U.S. legislators and international religious freedom leaders for the safe return of indigenous Armenians to their ancient homeland,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “Today’s congressional briefing was a great opportunity for legislators to hear first-hand about the Artsakh genocide and also for them to consult among themselves about the concrete U.S. steps needed to restore this integral part of the Armenian homeland.”

Artsakh Ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan and former State Minister Artak Beglaryan share an eyewitness account of Azerbaijan’s genocide against Artsakh Armenians and offer policy recommendations for justice and lasting peace.

During the briefing, Stepanyan and Beglaryan offered eyewitness accounts of the brutal realities of Azerbaijan’s ten-month blockade of Artsakh, which culminated in the September 2023 genocidal attack that forcibly emptied Artsakh of its indigenous Armenian population.  The Artsakh leaders shared the history of Azerbaijan’s premeditated attacks against Artsakh’s Armenians, which laid the foundation for the 2023 genocide.

Beglaryan and Stepanyan called for bold U.S. and international leadership to hold Azerbaijan accountable for the Artsakh genocide, including via:

— Sanctions on Azerbaijan, building on Senate passage of S.3000, which enforce Section 907 restriction on U.S. military and security aid to Azerbaijan.  They also encouraged the application of Magnitsky sanctions on Aliyev government officials for war crimes and ethnic cleansing committed during the 2020 Azerbaijan-Turkey war against Armenia and Artsakh and subsequent genocidal aggression.

— U.S. aid for Artsakh’s forcibly displaced Armenian community, including housing and job placement assistance, until a secure mechanism can be put in place through international oversight and mediation with Artsakh authorities to guarantee the safe return of forcibly displaced Armenians to their Artsakh homes.

— Expanded U.S. and international efforts to help secure the immediate release of Artsakh leaders captured in September 2023 and POWs illegally held by Azerbaijan since the 2020 Azerbaijan/Turkey attacks.

— Preservation of Artsakh’s Armenian cultural and religious heritage already under threat of destruction by Azerbaijan.

Stepanyan and Beglaryan stressed that without international efforts to address the Artsakh people’s right to safe return and justice for the crimes committed, it will be impossible to establish sustainable peace in the region. They also emphasized that the systemic anti-Armenian hatred fomented by the Azerbaijani government must be eradicated to ensure an enduring settlement of the conflict and regional stability.

The speakers underscored that enforcement of Section 907, via enactment of S. 3000, would represent a meaningful contribution to regional peace. They also touched on related initiatives, among them ANCA-backed resolutions pending in the U.S. House, H.R. 5686 and H.R.5683. These measures would hold Azerbaijan accountable for ethnic cleansing against Artsakh’s indigenous Armenians and help deter further military aggression against Armenia by providing foreign military financing (FMF) aid to Armenia. They also raised H.Res.735, requesting a report on Azerbaijan’s human rights practices under Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act, and H.Res.861, a bipartisan resolution introduced by Rep. Schiff calling on the United States to ensure the immediate release of Armenian POWs and other detained persons illegally held by Azerbaijan.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), Artsakh Ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan, former State Minister Artak Beglaryan and ANCA Government Affairs Director Tereza Yerimyan discuss U.S. policy options to support Artsakh’s forcibly displaced Armenian population.

The ANCA is accompanying Beglaryan and Stepanyan as they represent Artsakh interests during two weeks of Washington, D.C. meetings with elected officials, policymakers and religious freedom advocates, as part of a 120,0000 Reasons coalition effort supported by the Tufenkian Foundation and the Philos Project.

Earlier this week, Stepanyan offered powerful remarks on Capitol Hill at an International Religious Freedom Summit-related forum calling for U.S. government and non-governmental organization leadership to provide for the secure return of Artsakh Armenians, protection of Artsakh’s Christian heritage and sanctions against the Azerbaijani government.  Throughout the IRF Summit, they discussed the broad range of challenges and opportunities for international action to assist forcibly displaced Artsakh refugees.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) have introduced a bipartisan resolution requesting a report on Azerbaijan’s human rights practices pursuant to Section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act. The resolution requests information from the State Department on Azerbaijan’s human rights abuses both within the country, as well as during its sustained military assault against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) that last year resulted in the ethnic cleansing of its entire indigenous Armenian population. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Gary Peters (D-MI), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Peter Welch (D-VT) have joined as original cosponsors.

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has launched a nationwide action campaign urging senators to cosponsor and work toward passage of the Markey-Cassidy 502B legislation. Take action here.

The International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA) has awarded $2,500 grants to poet Alexa Luborsky for her work-in-progress, Deportation Route, and to translators Thomas Toghramadjian and Margarit Ordukhanyan for Yeghishe Charents’ Land of Nayiri (Yerkir Nairi) and Ruben Filyan’s Your Country’s Ambassador (Ambassador of your country), respectively.

Alexa Luborsky is a writer of Western Armenian and Eastern European Jewish descent. She is an MFA candidate in poetry, an H. Kruger Kaprielian Scholar and a Rachel Winer Manin Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow at the University of Virginia. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Bennington Review, Black Warrior Review, Guernica, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, LIT Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, the Offing, Pleiades, The Journal and West Branch, among others. She is the interviews editor for Poetry Northwest and reads for Meridian. Born in Toronto and raised in Rhode Island, she currently resides in Charlottesville, VA where she is working on her first collection of poetry about genocidal aftermaths and diaspora. You can find out more at www.lexaluborsky.com. 

Thomas Toghramadjian is a deacon of the Armenian Church, a teacher and a student of Armenian literature. Born and raised in the United States, he received his bachelor’s degree from Boston College in political science, English and Russian studies before repatriating to Armenia in 2019. Between 2019 and 2021 he completed a two-year fellowship with Teach For Armenia, living and teaching English in the village of Debed in Lori Province. Thomas is currently pursuing a master’s degree in modern Armenian literature at Yerevan State University, writing his thesis on Yeghishe Charents and the Symbolist movement. Read Toghramadjian’s recent translation piece here.

Margarit Ordukhanyan, Ph.D. is a New York-based scholar and translator of poetry and prose from her native Armenian and Russian into English. In addition to contributing translations to collections and anthologies both in the United States and abroad, she also studies literary bilingualism, translation theory and the role of translation pedagogy in language and humanities curricula. Among others, she focuses on the works of exophonic Armenian women writers, including Goar Markosyan-Kasper, whose Russian-language novel Пенелопа (Penelope) she is currently translating into English. Narine Abgaryan’s To Go On Living, co-translated by Ordukhanyan and Zara Torlone, is forthcoming from Plough Publishers. Ordukhanyan was the Fall 2022 Translator-in-Residence at the University of Iowa’s Translation Workshop and a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Translation Fellow. She is currently a fellow at the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities at the New York Public Library. 

The International Armenian Literary Alliance’s Creative Writing Grant awards $2,500 annually to one Armenian writer whose work-in-progress shows exceptional literary and creative ability. In 2023, the grant, judged by Gregory Djanikian and Raffi Wartanian, was awarded for a collection of poetry, and in the coming years, to works of creative nonfiction and fiction, as well as other mixed genre forms.

The Israelyan English Translation Grant from the International Armenian Literary Alliance was made possible by a generous donation from Souren A. Israelyan, whose funding will ensure more Armenian literature is translated into English. IALA’s 2023 Israelyan English Translation Grant, judged by Dr. Myrna Douzjian, Nairi Hakhverdi and Tatevik Ayvazyan, was open for any work of literature (in any form) written in Eastern Armenian and published any time after 1900.

In 2023, the International Armenian Literary Alliance also offered the Israelyan Armenian Translation Grant – made possible by a generous donation from Souren A. Israelyan as well. However, from the submissions received, judges Anna Davtyan, Armen Ohanyan and Zaven Boyajyan were unable to award a translation that met IALA’s requirements. Instead, the grant will be reserved for 2024.