Friday, January 13 2023 13:54

ArmInfo.Below is an article by Armenia's fifth president Armen Sarkissian posted on time.com. 

"For the past five weeks, the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, sandwiched  between Azerbaijan and Armenia, has been blockaded by Azerbaijan. As  much of the world celebrated Christmas and New Year, over 120,000  Armenian residents of the region-the oldest continuously inhabited  Armenian homeland, dotted with Armenian churches and monasteries and  monuments predating the spread of Christianity to Europe by  decades-were cut off from the world.

"A group of Azerbaijani citizens identifying as "environmental  activists" barricaded the Lachin corridor, a mountainous road that  serves as the only path between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, since  December 12. The flow of food and medicine fell to a trickle before  the supplies essential for the continuation of normal life gradually  disappeared altogether. A place that once received 400 tons of food  and medical supplies daily now barely receives a few carloads on a  good day. Hospitals have indefinitely put surgeries on hold. Children  are going hungry. There is an acute shortage of fuel as temperatures  drop to below -4шC, and families are burning scraps to heat their  homes.

"Armenians, a people who endured a protracted genocide under the  Ottoman Empire before being exposed to Soviet autocratic rule in the  20th century, are being subjected to collective punishment in the  21st century with the intent of driving them out of their home.

"Nagorno-Karabakh, a historically Armenian territory, is known to  Armenians as Artsakh. Despite its history and demography, it was  handed to Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921 by Joseph Stalin, who implemented  the imperial method of disrupting cohesive national and ethnic  communities to keep diverse populations in check. In 1988, the people  of Artsakh voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to dissolve Moscow's  artificial cartography, secede from Soviet Azerbaijan and assert  their Armenian identity.

"This defiant act of self-determination resulted in yet more  massacres of Armenians, whose wish was not honored. Upon the USSR's  collapse, Artsakh ended up inside the Soviet frontiers inherited by  Azerbaijan.  The Armenians, however, defeated Azerbaijan in the First  Nagorno-Karabakh War, which lasted until 1994, when the region  proclaimed its autonomy. Then, in 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19  pandemic, Azerbaijan launched a surprise offensive-now known as the  Second Nagorno-Karabakh War-with the open involvement and assistance  of Turkey.

"Azerbaijan wanted the land-without the people who inhabit the land.  Its battlefield gains were followed by a ruthless effort to raze all  traces of Armenian history. While Armenia maintains a medieval mosque  in its capital, has excellent relations with the Islamic world and  welcomes people of all faiths, Azerbaijan has taken to disfiguring  and destroying Armenian churches in the territory it took as a matter  of policy.  Hundreds of Armenian servicemen still remain in Azeri  captivity.

"The humanitarian catastrophe we are now witnessing-or, more  accurately, the world is refusing to witness-is a textbook enactment  of ethnic cleansing. More than a dozen nongovernmental organisations,  including Genocide Watch, have issued a stark warning that  Azerbaijan's blockade is "designed to, in the words of the Genocide  Convention, deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to  bring about the end of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group  in whole or in part. All 14 risk factors for atrocity crimes  identified by the UN Secretary-General's Office on Genocide  Prevention are now present."

"The only lifeline for Armenians in Artsakh is that slender road that  connects them to Armenia.

"Volunteers at home and in Armenian diaspora communities are doing  all they can to help. As the former president of Armenia, I have  decided to give the pension set up for me in law to humanitarian  causes in Artsakh. Such efforts cannot, however, succeed in  isolation. History-Armenian history-teaches us that the success of  genocidal campaigns is always dependent on the silence of the world.  It is time for the international community to speak up."