Mediabox spoke to Paul Gavan, speaker at the PACE summer session on ‘Ensuring free and safe access through the Lachin Corridor’ about his report on ensuring free and safe access through the Lachin Corridor, a vital route for the Armenian population in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).
“The Lachin corridor connects the people of Nagorno-Karabakh who are Armenian population directly back to Armenia itself and to the rest of the world. It is the only point of access back to Armenia since the war of 2020, so the crucial point of access. And unfortunately, I was asked to investigate whether this corridor has been blocked since the December 12 of the last year.
What I found on my report and what I found from my on the ground visits in Armenia, unfortunately I was not allowed to go to Azerbaijan, was that Karabakh has been blocked first by the so-called ‘eco-activists’, that seem to bear very close resemblance to a large number of members of the Azerbaijani military and government support services, and then via a new checkpoint established by Azerbaijan itself at the end of April.
This is a very serious situation. Because not only the corridor is blocked, there is also cuts of gas and electricity, and now challenges around the water. So a very serious situation from the human rights perspective.
I am making a clear call for the opening of the Lachin corridor. I am making a clear call for the restoration of the gas and electricity. But above all, I am calling for a fact-finding mission to Nagorno-Karabakh. This is the essential call, because, unfortunately, they won’t let me in, but they also will not let the human rights commissioner in, they will not let the UN Consul Refugees in, they have not let anyone in. So while telling that everything is fine, they won’t let anyone in to actually inspect for themselves to see what is happening,” Gavan stated.
