"People are standing in queues for hours to get minimal food rations. People are fainting in the bread queues"... these were the words of a local journalist from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in one of her recorded voice messages sent to the BBC last week.
In June 2023, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accused Azerbaijan of "ethnic cleansing" with its continued blockade of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Azerbaijan's blockade of the only road linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh has created a shortage of food, water, medicine and other essential items in the region which has 1,20,000 inhabitants.
Baku's installation of an illegal checkpoint in the Lachin Corridor and its ongoing blockade are "actions that once again substantiate our fear that Azerbaijan is conducting a policy of ethnic cleansing", PM Pashinian said in Parliament in June.
For almost two years, the focus of the entire world and its leaders has been on the Russia-Ukraine war. Almost at the same time, another country on the same continent has been accused to be guilty of attempting to perpetrate genocide.
Azerbaijan however has claimed that it had created conditions for the safe and efficient transit of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh through the Lachin checkpoint.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a landlocked region, is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but most of it is governed by the unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) since the first Nagorno-Karabakh War.
The region has been at the centre of a decades-long conflict between the two countries which have fought two wars for control of the region -- in the 1990s and in 2020 -- that have claimed thousands of lives from both sides.
The conflict started after the fall of the Soviet Union in the '90s when both Muslim-majority Azerbaijan and Christian-majority Armenia wanted Nagorno-Karabakh whose population largely comprises ethnic-majority Armenians to be part of both republics.
The second Nagorno-Karabakh war started in 2020 after Azerbaijan launched an offensive that recaptured territory around Karabakh. Some 3,000 Azerbaijani soldiers and 4,000 Armenian soldiers were killed in six weeks of fighting.
A Russian-mediated ceasefire agreement in 2020 saw Armenia cede swathes of territories it had controlled for some three decades to Azerbaijan. As per the deal, Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey and its military, would hold on to areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that it had taken during the conflict.
Moscow also deployed peacekeepers to the Lachin corridor to ensure free passage between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Recently, Azerbaijan has been accused of using this corridor to control and starve the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to death.
Former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, recently quoted an observation of the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court: "The 1,20,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh are now entirely encircled by Azerbaijan, completely cut off from the access to the outside world."
"They are effectively under siege," he said.
CNN reported that shortages of food, fuel, and medicines caused by the months-long blockade have taken an increasing toll on the region’s population.
Gegham Stepanyan, the ombudsman of the NKR, on August 15 confirmed that officials reported the first death from malnutrition in the region.
Is it a genocide?
In a conservative sense, we describe genocide as the slaughtering of people belonging to a particular community. But according to the UN Genocide Convention, "Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
And genocide is exactly what has been happening in Nagorno-Karabakh according to the ex-chief prosecutor of the International Court of Justice.
Ocampo found the occurrence of several elements of Genocide as per the UN Genocide Convention including "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction."
He concluded that the rights of ethnic Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region are affected by the blockade of the Lachin Corridor which was put in force in December 2022.
In his report, Ocampo said, "As has happened in previous cases, Genocide, in particular, when committed by starvation, is neglected."
Lachin corridor, the only road connecting the Armenian-majority Nagorno Karabakh to the outside world, has been blockaded by Azerbaijan since December 2022 for "environmental reasons."
The corridor is important for the supply of goods like food and medicines to the breakaway region in Azerbaijan.
In February this year, the International Criminal Court of Justice ordered the Azerbaijan government to lift the blockade and allow free passage of goods and services through the corridor.
The top UN court said, "Baku (Azerbaijan) must take all measures at its disposal to ensure the unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles, and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions,".
However, the Azerbaijan government responded to the order by establishing a checkpoint and blocking humanitarian aid carried by various human rights bodies including the Red Cross.
Who is responsible?
When it is established that the people of Nagorno-Karabakh are facing genocide, the next question is who is responsible? One of the most obvious reasons pointed out by multiple political analysts and lawyers like Ocampo is the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, the supreme commander of these security forces in Azerbaijan.
It was under his command the Lachin Corridor was blockaded by the security border personnel of the country.
Aliyev, who accepted the Russian peacemakers after the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020 and agreed to keep the Lachin corridor open for free passage of goods and services, went back on the agreement the moment Russia invaded Ukraine.
According to Ocampo, "Instead of negotiating the autonomy of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, he systematically took steps through a series of decisions to eliminate the Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh."
For starters, Aliyev allowed a civilian group to block the Lachin Corridor, which he was supposed to keep open, according to the pact after 2020.
Second, following the order from the International Court of Justice to lift the blockade, he put checkpoints in place on the border with Armenia, stopping humanitarian aid from getting to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Following global criticism of the blockade, in one of his interviews with Euronews, Azerbaijan President Aliyev justified his move, saying the blockade was to avoid the alleged smuggling of arms, gasoline and other illegal substances from Armenia as well as the alleged illegal excavation of natural resources in the region.
He further said that the checkpoint was established to implement the International Court of Justice's decision.
“Actually the International Court of Justice actually addressed its message to us to communicate with civil society activists and not to disrupt any kind of movement. And we did it. And as soon as we established a border checkpoint on our border with Armenia, which is our legitimate right…We communicated through my representative here in Shusha (a city in the disputed region) with NGOs’ representatives for them (civil society groups) to stop, and they stopped. They left. So now, freedom of movement is not blocked.”
The President also said that his motive is to put an end to separatism. Besides, he claims that "he is not organizing ethnic cleansing."
Azerbaijan's Ambassador to India Ashraf Shikhaliyev shares his response
Being a regular reader of The New Indian Express, I was surprised, to say the least, to read the above article, which I found to be controversial and biased.
It starts with a reference to the words of an Armenian journalist and is full of references to Armenian sources. It also quotes the statement of Prime Minister of Armenia N Pashinian in parliament in June, while failing to mention that on 6 July 2023 the International Court of Justice unanimously rejected Armenia's appeal submitted to this Court on 12 May 2023 -- that the installation of the border crossing point on 23 April 2023 at the beginning of the Lachin road was "illegal".
On 16 August 2023, the UN Security Council considered the issue and did not come up with any resolution or declaration calling for the removal of the checkpoint on Lachin Road as illegal. Moreover, the majority of UN Security Council members stressed the importance of not politicizing the issue.
The article also makes references to Armenia's ungrounded allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing. In this regard, it should be noted that Azerbaijan pursues a policy of integration of ethnic Armenian residents of the Garabagh region (there is no region called Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan, and the author should be using its correct geographic name) as equal citizens, guaranteeing them the rights and freedoms envisaged in Azerbaijan's constitution and international human rights mechanisms.
The author refers to the report of the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo, which was prepared by him within a week and without even visiting the region. Surprisingly, the author does not even mention in this regard the report and legal opinion of Rodney Dixon KC, an independent expert appointed by the Government of Azerbaijan to review the opinion of Luis Moreno Ocampo, which was published as an official UN document (A/77/1008-S/2023/635 of 29 August 2023).
The author also makes reference to the false statement of the so-called "ombudsman" of the illegal regime informing of the first death from malnutrition, while medical experts, who examined the photos of the body of the deceased, expressed a firm opinion that the person had died either from cancer or as a result of drug addiction.
She also twists the provision of the Statement by the leadership of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russian Federation dated 10 November 2020, which does not require an unimpeded or free movement along the Lachin road, but clearly states that "The Republic of Azerbaijan shall guarantee the safety of citizens, vehicles and goods travelling along the Lachin corridor in both directions", which is fully ensured by Azerbaijani side.
In an effort to promote balanced and informed reporting, we are more than willing to provide you with all the necessary information and access to officials who can shed light on the ground realities. We believe that a more accurate portrayal of the situation will serve the interests of your readers and uphold the principles of responsible journalism.
Edit: We had mistakenly mentioned the International Criminal Court as the International Criminal Court of Justice at one place in the article. This has been corrected after it was pointed out. We have also added the essence of the Azerbaijan Ambassador's reply respecting his request to do so.