Christian Solidarity International statement on first anniversary of ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh

Satellite images showing destruction of Armenian village of Karin Tak. Image: Monument Watch

Source: Christian Solidarity International

September 19, 2024: One year ago today, the dictatorship of Azerbaijan launched an armed attack on the entire territory of Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh). Civilians hid in their cellars as bombs fell on residential neighbourhoods and schools where children were attending class. Entire villages fled the onslaught. Hospitals filled with wounded people for whom, due to Azerbaijan's nine-month siege of the region, there was no medicine. Azerbaijani troops blocked the roads between villages, preventing locals from collecting their dead.

Hundreds of people were killed in a fuel depot explosion, as they rushed to fill their canisters with petrol they needed to evacuate their families. The only highway between Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia was so packed with traffic that most families needed two or three days to evacuate by car along a route that usually takes two hours to drive.

Azerbaijan's attack, combined with the blockade that preceded it, was designed to empty Nagorno Karabakh of its ancient population of Armenian Christians, and it succeeded. Of the nearly 120,000 Armenian Christians who lived in Nagorno Karabakh on September 19, 2023, only 14 now remain. Rarely in modern history has an act of ethnic or religious cleansing been so complete.

Christian Solidarity International issued a genocide warning for Nagorno Karabakh on December 19, 2022, one week after Azerbaijan's blockade began. We regret that in the nine months that followed, none of the powers with interests in the South Caucasus took any action to avert this act of genocide. Both Russia and the United States, competing with each other for influence in the region, sought to win Azerbaijan's favour.

For decades, the Minsk Group Co-Chairs - France, Russia, and the United States - led a peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan based in part on the principles of the non-use of force and of self-determination for the people of Nagorno Karabakh. In the lead-up to the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh, these powers abandoned the latter principle. Weeks before Azerbaijan's attack, the US ambassador to Armenia, Kristina Kvien, confidently assured Karabakh Armenians that they could live safely under Azerbaijani rule.

One week before the attack, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Yuri Kim asserted: "The United States will not countenance any action or effort - short-term or long-term - to ethnically cleanse or commit other atrocities against the Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh."

Two months after the ethnic cleansing was completed, Assistant Secretary of State James O'Brien stated, "there's no chance of business as usual" with Baku.

Despite O'Brien's promise, the US and the international community have intensified their business with Azerbaijan since it completed its ethnic cleansing campaign - even as Azerbaijan demolishes Armenian churches, graveyards, villages and civic sites across occupied Nagorno Karabakh, in defiance of orders from the International Court of Justice.

Azerbaijan was chosen to host the United Nations' annual climate change conference, COP29, this November. American officials have been regular guests in Baku, and Azerbaijan's dictatorial president Ilham Aliyev has been toasted at summits and conferences across the Western world. In May the US. ambassador to Azerbaijan, Mark Libby, consented to a tour of the ethnically-cleansed Armenian city of Shushi, after Azerbaijani media outlets threatened him with expulsion from the country.

Today, American and European diplomats confidently assure us that Armenia and Azerbaijan have "never been closer" to a peace agreement. In reality, for the past year, the "peace process" has consisted largely of a string of escalating Azerbaijani demands for unilateral concessions, which Armenia's Western "partners" have largely prevailed upon it to accept. Meanwhile, Ilham Aliyev, the institutions of his state and his state-controlled media are propagandizing Azerbaijan's population to view the Republic of Armenia as "Western Azerbaijan," "our historic lands," "to which we must return."

The ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh was just the latest phase in an Armenian Genocide process that has been ongoing since the late 19th century, and it is increasingly clear that Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey are now preparing the next phase.

Against these atrocities and looming threats, Christian Solidarity International affirms its enduring solidarity with the Armenian people and the people of Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh in particular. We commit ourselves to helping the people of Nagorno Karabakh return to their land with all fundamental human rights intact, especially their right to self-determination.

We will do so by supporting the initiatives taken by their elected representatives, including the work of the Committee for the Defense of the Fundamental Rights of the People of Nagorno Karabakh, led by former Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian. We will also campaign for Armenian hostages held by Azerbaijan, such as Ruben Vardanyan and Vicken Euljekjian. We encourage all people of good will to do the same.

We warn that a peace built on genocide and the threat of further genocide will never bring stability or security to the Caucasus region. The international community has a window of opportunity, now, to build a durable peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a peace based on trust and mutual respect for human rights. To do so, Azerbaijan's allies must do what they have consistently refused to do for the past eight years - restrain Azerbaijan's aggression and uphold the rights of the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh.