COP29 to host Azerbaijan guilty of 'ethnic cleansing' during 2023 invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh: report
Azerbaijan has carried out “ethnic cleansing” against the Armenian population over the past 14 months in an invasion of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, a new report by the Washington-based non-profit Freedom House has concluded.
I complete reportissued on the first day of COP29, the United Nations climate conference held this month in Azerbaijan, drawing on more than 300 Karabakh Armenians. The conference, which started on November 11, wrapped up this weekend in Baku, the country's capital, under the auspices of the same government accused of committing crimes against humanity.
Human rights groups, environmental activist Greta Thunberg and politicians from Canada and the United States are among those who have expressed dismay and fear that the conference is being held in a major oil-producing country with a questionable record of respecting rights – a charge by Azerbaijan's political leaders. called “disgusting” and a “smear campaign.”
The Freedom House report includes accounts from survivors of last year's military operation, including this woman's account of the start of the attack: “On September 19, [2023]I came home at noon to have lunch. My child came and told me that we heard an explosion. I saw through the window that they were shooting in the residential area.”
Less than two weeks later, she, her child and more than 100,000 other Armenians were interviewed. could be refugeespart of the violent eviction campaign that ended more than a thousand years of Armenian settlement there.
The report, titled Why Are There No Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh?, is a complete indictment of Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and his government.
Conducted by researchers from Freedom House and six partner organizations — four groups based in Armenia with expertise in Ukrainian research, a Ukrainian NGO focused on Russian war crimes, and a group based in Brussels — its conclusions are unequivocal.
The last 24-hour attack by the Azerbaijani army in the area last year was “the culmination of an intense, years-long campaign,” in which the perpetrators “deliberately killed civilians and enjoyed complete impunity” for doing so, the report said. “The actions of the Azerbaijani government,” it concluded, “constitute ethnic cleansing using forced deportations as a means.”
Exodus almost everyone
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was one of the Soviet Union's longest-running conflicts. Local Armenians in the region, supported by Armenia itself, fought a successful war to separate themselves from newly independent Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. Azerbaijan bounced back in 2020, winning three-quarters of the territory in a 44-day war.
Russian peacekeepers moved into the area after the war ended but proved unable to stop Azerbaijan's nine-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh or its military offensive on September 19, 2023 – the latter of which led to its total capture and near-evacuation. total population.
The thousands of testimonies about these events collected in a new Freedom House report make for painful reading.
“People were starving and fainting in the bread lines,” said one interviewee, describing famine-like conditions during Azerbaijan's blockade, which cut off all access to foreign countries – including essential food. “It was very difficult to survive. We thought that in the end we would really starve.”
Evidence of Azerbaijan's final fury and subsequent exit paints an even worse picture. “I was surrounded by children and I tried not to panic,” said one woman, from Sarnaghbyur village. “I told them not to be afraid and I suggested that they pray. At that moment we heard an explosion near us,” he explained, explaining how the bombs in Azerbaijan killed five people, including three children.
Others are taunting and harassing Azerbaijani workers – sometimes even beating them or stealing their jewelry – as they make the perilous journey to Armenia. “[The Azerbaijanis] they turned up their music, shouted something at us, insulted us with their fingers and said: 'Go away!'” said one of the locals.
The intensity of these issues made even producing the report difficult, the researchers said.
“There are shocking testimonies from the people of Karabakh Armenia that were difficult to read, even for us,” said Andranik Shirinyan, Freedom House's country representative in Armenia. “Emotionally and psychologically, working on this report has been difficult for everyone involved.”
Evidence from the 'call to action' report
The sum total of the actions of the Azerbaijani government, and the lifeless environment they created in Nagorno-Karabakh, was the basis of Freedom House's declaration of ethnic cleansing in the region.
“'Ethnic cleansing' is not a defined legal term – it is a political term used to emphasize the magnitude of the atrocities committed in a particular area,” Shirinyan said.
“We analyzed three periods – the period of war after 2020, the blockade and migration. While analyzing these, we found the results of extrajudicial killings, torture, human rights violations, serious human rights violations. We realized that Azerbaijan created an area of Nagorno-Karabakh that would not allow Armenian community there to live and live with dignity.”
Freedom House based its assessment in part on legal conclusions from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslaviathe United Nations agency that prosecuted war crimes committed during the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s.
A United Nations spokesman said on Friday the UN would send an aid team to Nagorno-Karabakh this weekend as more than 100,000 refugees have arrived in Armenia from neighboring Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan resumed a military offensive in September. 19.
The parallels between the war crimes there and the actions of the Azerbaijani government in Nagorno-Karabakh make the term “ethnic cleansing” entirely appropriate, some human rights experts say.
“The in-depth investigation of Freedom House shows how the attack by the Azerbaijani authorities in September 2023 is related to similar cases of forced migration. [that] international courts have checked,” said Steve Swerdlow, a human rights lawyer and professor of international relations at the University of Southern California.
“These include the former Yugoslavia, as well as more recent cases, such as Myanmar's ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. The shocking evidence in this report is a call for action in international courts against impunity.”
Azerbaijan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not responded to a request for comment by press time.
'Now there's nowhere for me to really go back'
Amidst this brutality, the nearly 2,000-strong Russian peacekeeping force in Nagorno-Karabakh stood by and watched, the report said. It is full of anecdotes that explain their inaction and refusal to deal with violence in Azerbaijan.
“We have seen many incidents where Russian soldiers stood by while Azerbaijani soldiers threatened the lives of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians,” Shirinyan said. “It is safe to say that the Russian peacekeepers were unable or unwilling to fulfill their mission.”
Shirinyan said he hopes the report will help bring some kind of accountability to the Azerbaijani government, at least in the long term, despite the fact that Baku is busy. erasing all traces of Armenian presence in the region.
Most Karabakh Armenians are losing such hope.
“Until recently, I had little hope, fueled by international calls for the return of Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh,” said Lilit Shahverdyan, a journalist from Stepanakert, the region's now-defunct capital.
“A few days ago, our house was demolished and the whole place where I grew up. A lot of other residential buildings are robbed every day,” he said.
“I firmly believe that Aliyev's intention is to crush any hope we have of going back…. Now I have nowhere to go back.”
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