Before the eyes of the international public, dictator Aliyev attacks the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh with military strikes.

 

Videos from the capital Stepanakert show artillery strikes, drones and gunfire as well as people fleeing into basements and seeking protection.

The ISHR strongly condemns the Azerbaijani war of aggression and warns against violent ethnic cleansing.

The human rights organization calls on Germany and the EU to immediately stop all economic relations with Azerbaijan and impose severe sanctions against the Aliyev regime.

Will  German and European leaders  remain  inactive  and thereby  endanger the existence of the independent state of Armenia? 

Werden deutsche und europäische Spitzenpolitiker weiter untätig bleiben und damit die Existenz des eigenständigen Staates Armenien aufs Spiel setzen?

Hundreds of people have gathered at the closed airport in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the hope of evacuation. 

SPECIAL NEWSLETTER, September 21, 2023

As these lines are being written, the residents of the Armenian enclave are trembling. They are afraid of what is to come, the uncertainty is tormenting in view of the bombing, hundreds of deaths and the highly armed Azerbaijani soldiers, whose circle is drawing ever closer around Nagorno-Karabakh/the de facto republic of Artsakh.

And yet:  international media interest remains low . The only land route has been blocked by Azerbaijani forces for months. In the beginning there were “environmental protectors”, but at some point uniformed people took their place. We and many other voices have been warning about the planned ethnic cleansing of the area since December 2022.

Further information on the blockade of the Lachin corridor

When massive units of Azerbaijani troops were moved to the border with Nagorno-Karabakh in recent weeks   , many people were still cautious. After the first artillery strikes on Tuesday, the use of high-precision weapons, and the encirclement of several villages by Azerbaijani troops, it became clear what so many had warned about: a war by Azerbaijan against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The goal is their expulsion,  President Aliyev is also very direct here:  On April 20, 2021, he announced the following:  “Just like before and during the war, I said that they [the Armenians] must leave our country, otherwise they will we drive them out by force. And so it happened. The same applies to the Sangesur corridor.”
In the following paragraphs we provide a brief contextual context.  
December 2022. The blockade of the Lachin corridor by  alleged environmental activists  led to a humanitarian catastrophe in Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh Republic. 
Armenia, a millennia-old Indo-European people between East and West, the  first Christian state in the world , fell directly into the hands of the Stalinist Soviet dictatorship after the First World War, after one of the cruelest genocides in human history with up to 1.5 million victims. In the border treaties between the two western outsiders Stalin and Ataturk, over half of their millennia-old settlement area around their holy Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark is said to have been stranded, was denied them and given to Turkey (today’s eastern Anatolia). In addition, the  Armenian people were cut into two parts.

A small area in the Karabakh Mountains, which was almost exclusively inhabited by Armenians, was assigned to the Azerbaijani Soviet Republic as the “Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region”. Since then, the Karabakh Armenians have been striving for reunification with core Armenia. With the collapse of the Soviet system, hopes were high and millions of Armenians lined the streets chanting “ We are one people .” But neither the Soviet system nor the newly independent Azerbaijan was prepared to grant the Armenians special ethnic rights, not even those that were granted to them as an autonomous region under Stalin.

After the first massacre of the Armenian population in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait, there was one Spiral of violence that resulted in the “First Karabakh War ”  1992-1994  and resulted in 50,000 deaths and 1 million refugees. Armenia emerged as the winner, so to speak, having taken over both Nagorno-Karabakh and seven provinces surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh as a “protective belt”. 
Since then, peace negotiations have been ongoing under the aegis of the OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by Russia, the USA and France. However, the three guidelines of mutual recognition of territorial and ethnic rights and non-violence proved to steadily square the circle.
The area marked by many wars and conflicts. The core Armenian territory occupied by Azerbaijan since the Second Karabakh War with hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of Armenian refugees is hatched in red/pink. Map: By Rr016 –  Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, 
The genocidal policy in Armenia


Azerbaijan, which sits at the source of oil on the Caspian Sea and has developed into a booming petrostate, has systematically  implemented an all-encompassing genocidal Armenian policy over these three decades , everything specifically and with the promise of a military reconquest.
 
Together with its “brother state” Turkey, Armenia was  deliberately bled dry economically  and cut off from the outside world. Together, the Armenian genocide, recognized by all Western specialist bodies, was not only rigidly denied, but also mocked in an inhumane manner. What’s more, Azerbaijan now determined by presidential decree that the Armenians had committed two genocides against their people. There was also one in Azerbaijan implemented  baseless scientific historical theory (Albania theory), which not only denies the Armenians their identity in the South Caucasus, but also accuses them of forgery and fraud in taking over the cultural heritage there. Furthermore, today’s Armenia is referred to as a separate Azerbaijani historical country and even as “West Azerbaijan” and the aim is to repopulate it.

All these ideas were imposed on the entire education system and so  every Azerbaijani child learned from an early age that the Armenians were barbarians , fascists and cruel murderers of their people. At the same time, this implementation of enemy images always served to  consolidate the autocratic family dynasty .


The youth are protesting FOR the war

After almost thirty years, everything was ready for the reconquest – strengthened by mass youth protests for war. After numerous military maneuvers with the brother and NATO state Turkey, through billions in state-of-the-art weapons deliveries, especially from Israel, Russia and Turkey, as well as with Putin’s “OK” and, last but not least, in the shadow of the Corona crisis, the Azerbaijani President was able to do so on September 27th In 2020, the battle cry of the “Patriotic War”, the “Second Karabakh War”, sounded: “ We will hunt the dogs ”.

And so Israeli kamikaze drones swooped in with the inscription “ Dog Hunters“automated on soldiers of the small Karabakh army. To the people whose families were victims of the first systematic genocide of the 20th century and who have now themselves become victims of the first modern drone war of the 21st century.
 
After the Azerbaijani victory was achieved after 44 days, a ceasefire agreement was reached with the total surrender of Armenia. What remained was  70 percent of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region , which had historically been renamed the Republic of Artsakh since 2017. Free traffic to core Armenia could only be guaranteed via the only road connection in the “Lachin Corridor” – protected by Russian “peacekeepers”.

The violent action was “strictly reprimanded” by Western democratic bodies, but it was determined that we now had to go back to squaring the circle, i.e. back to the responsible OSCE Minsk Group. And that while Turkish President Recep Erdogan and his dearest brother, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev celebrated “ the victory of the entire Turkish world”  from the official gallery at the victory parade and were happy that the soul of the person most responsible for the Armenian genocide “Enver Pascha would now rejoice.”


Go to the next major attack with impunity and without consequences

So with impunity and without consequences, another major attack by Azerbaijan took place on September 12, 2022 – this time on internationally recognized, clearly Armenian territory with  hundreds of deaths, territorial seizures and tens of thousands of Armenian refugees . And exactly  three months later, the blockade of the Lachin corridor . And after the poor mountain farming population has been terrorized there for almost a year, Aliev’s “ anti-terror operation ” has been taking place for days, as a  war of aggression has been called since Putin coined the word  .

While the international Western democratic committees from afar are once again calling on “both sides” to de-escalate and want them to return to the negotiating table, the  old regional powers, especially Russia and Turkey , have long since decided not only about the fate of their “pawn victims” in Nagorno-Karabakh decided, but rather the whole of Armenia was involved in “their negotiations”.
July 18, 2021, Commission President  Ursula von der Leyen  and Azerbaijani President  Ilham Aliyev  signed an agreement on a strategic partnership in the energy sector. Three days earlier, Aliyev repeatedly threatened war and said: “I said that we will allocate as much money as necessary for two directions – the restoration of the liberated areas and the development of our military potential.” Image: European Commission

Do we continue to reward Azerbaijan for displacement and war?


On March 10, 2022, the  European Parliament  stated in an official statement that “the  erasure of Armenia’s cultural heritage  is  part of a broader pattern of systematic, nationwide policy of  anti-Armenianism ,  historical revisionism  and  hatred towards Armenians, carried out across the country and promoted by the Azerbaijani authorities , which includes dehumanization, glorification of violence and territorial claims against the Republic of Armenia, threatening peace and security in the South Caucasus.

And yet,  even after the “44 Days War” at the end of 2020, the EU continued to let dictator Aliyev have his way and rewarded him with energy and raw materials deals.

More details in our press release

Arrived in today

The day before yesterday, on Wednesday evening, Azerbaijan declared the operation over and announced that the country  was seeking to “reintegrate”  Nagorno-Karabakh into its territory. Meanwhile, anti-war activists have been arrested in Azerbaijan, because dictator Ilham Aliyev does not tolerate any objections in his own country.

Armenia’s current president, Pashinyan, has severed his country’s decades-long historical ties to Russia, and there are some who want to reverse that. At the same time,  the majority of Armenians want  to live in a free, Western-style society  and are looking for  proximity to the EU.
ISHR delegation at the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan.


What’s next? Will  German and European leaders  remain  inactive  and thereby  endanger the existence of the independent state of Armenia? 

Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin Corridor are just the  beginning of the planned land grab . The Sangesur corridor is also on the list  . This embodies the  realization of the old pan-Turkish dream  of a  Turkish empire from the Adriatic to China ; it is not least Erdogan’s personal dream. Meanwhile, in Nagorno-Karabakh, people are expecting everything and  fearing for their lives in view of the possible invasion of the cities by Azerbaijani soldiers !

Take action: vigil tomorrow in front of the Federal Chancellery

At this point we would like to draw your attention to the  vigil  in Berlin  this Saturday ,  September 23rd  : 12:00-3:00 p.m., in front of the Federal Chancellery.

It would be nice if many of you made it to the Chancellery to speak up for the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh who are threatened with ethnic cleansing. We will also participate. 

We are currently working on detailed  historical documentation  about the area that has been inhabited by Armenians for centuries and will hopefully be able to make this available to you soon.


We thank you for your interest in this special newsletter

from the IGFM team