It is sad, extremely sad, that despite hundreds of alarms, decisions of the International Court of Justice, resolutions of the European Parliament, PACE and parliaments of individual countries, calls of executive bodies, the international community, we were all unable to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an address to the European parliament.
“The Government of Armenia and the European Parliament repeatedly warned about the imminent ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Government of Armenia has sent many calls to the UN, OSCE, EU to send a fact-finding team to the illegally blocked Lachin Corridor and Nagorno-Karabakh, but no organization made such a decision. We initiated three discussions related to the topic in the UN Security Council, but the discussions did not produce any practical results and, here, Nagorno Karabakh is already depopulated. Due to the inaction of the Russian peacekeeping force, more than 100,000 Armenians left their homes and homeland in Nagorno-Karabakh within a week, another 20,000 were forced to leave Nagorno-Karabakh immediately after the 44-day war, and some due to the illegal blockade of the Lachin Corridor that started in December 2022. They did not have the opportunity to return to Karabakh,” Pm Pashinyan said.
“And today some pretend that they do not understand why the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh left their homes en masse. Asking such a question is cynicism in itself, because the answer is more than clear. Azerbaijan clearly and unequivocally demonstrated its decision to make the life of Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh impossible,” he emphasized.
“From December 2022, during the illegal blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh were deprived of external supplies of gas, electricity, fuel, food, baby food, medicine, hygiene and other essential items, civilians carrying out agricultural work were targeted by the armed forces of Azerbaijan,” the Prime Minister noted.
“Since December 2022, we have alerted dozens of times about Azerbaijan’s plan,” PM Pashinyan said adding that after closing the Lachin Corridor, Azerbaijan starved people, increased military and psychological pressure, then opened the Lachin Corridor, and thus forced all Armenians to leave.
“We talked about such a scenario in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August of 2023, we talked loudly and publicly. And I do not accept the surprised faces of some international officials on the occasion of the depopulation of Nagorno Karabakh that took place in September,” PM Pashinyan stated.
At the same time, he thanked the European Parliament for naming what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh by its name. “This is important to protect the future rights of people who have been deprived of their citizenship,” he noted.
