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AND IN OTHER NEWS: World Forced to React to Karabakh Genocide

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AND IN OTHER NEWS: World Forced to React to Karabakh Genocide

The finding by a noted figure like Luis Moreno Ocampo, who served as the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, that the current blockade by Azerbaijan against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh fits the definition of genocide, attracted important coverage in the mainstream media which had been lacking over the past eight months. 

The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is so dire, that international bodies have also been unable to ignore it any longer. Prior to the UN Security Council discussing the issue on Wednesday, August 16, various UN bodies tweeted warnings about what is going on.  

An early one to pick up the story afterwards was CNN’s Jake Tapper, who has tweeted about US recognition of the Armenian Genocide in recent years as well. 

CNN went on to publish an article citing Ocampo’s finding. 

The Telegraph’s coverage had the headline “it is like a concentration camp” to describe the conditions Armenians are enduring in Nagorno-Karabakh, and quoted a member of UK Parliament from the ruling Conservative Party criticizing the UK’s lack of response to it. 

The Washington Post has published three articles in quick succession about the Lachin crisis and humanitarian situation, starting with an opinion by its associate editor David Ignatius, followed by the one above issued on behalf of the Post’s editorial board with a warning to Aliyev, and the analysis below: 

The Post’s article was shared by Ken Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, who has a large following on Twitter. 

Despite Azerbaijan’s responsibility to keep the Lachin corridor open, it points to an alternative “Aghdam Road” through which humanitarian aid could also be brought into the region. However this aid would be coming through Azerbaijan, and Armenians have no trust in what goods they might be receiving, and in addition it doesn’t solve the myriad of issues regarding Armenians trapped due to the closed Lachin border, since Armenians are forbidden from entering Azerbaijan. As Ruben Vardanyan points out, Azerbaijan is using starvation as a bargaining chip against Armenians in order to get out of its past agreements with them and subjugate them instead. 

Noted political scientist Ian Bremmer also tweeted a video describing why the world needs to take notice of the danger facing Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Commentator Michael Rubin pointed out President Aliyev’s own exposure to prosecution due to his actions against Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Jacobin, a leading voice on political and social issues, also had something to say.

Many who speak however have been at the receiving end of the Azerbaijani troll army and condemnation from Azerbaijani officials. The harassment is intended to make the personal cost of speaking out for the lives of Armenians too high, and in fact it has led to some in the press to quietly refuse to report on Armenian-Azerbaijani issues because of backlash they’d receive. 

While attacks from Azerbaijani officials are nothing new, what we are seeing lately is those at the highest levels aren’t beneath blatantly condemning their counterparts on Twitter rather than discussing matters behind closed doors. Officials from third countries like the Foreign Minister of Lithuania have found themselves chided for being “deceived” by Armenians, not to mention the all-out field day against President Macron of France and all things French. Since the only country which is on record of completely backing Azerbaijan’s approach against Nagorno-Karabakh has been Turkey, the messaging coming out of Baku is that world bodies, leading nations, and a multitude of policy-makers have all been “tricked” by Armenians.. 

Despite the inundation of anti-Armenian messaging within Azerbaijan, not everyone is taken in by it. This brave message of radical solidarity was issued by the “Feminist Peace Collective”, which includes some Azerbaijani members still inside the country. It draws a parallel between the fake “eco-protestors” who were used to start the blockade and the protesters in the Azerbaijani village of Soyudlu who were beaten protesting mining in their village, saying “as a result, it can be said that neither the welfare of the Armenian nor the Azerbaijani population is of interest to the ruling class.” It closes with: “we demand the immediate opening of the Lachin/Berdzor corridor, the delivery of necessary food products to the Armenians of Karabakh/Artsakh, the reunification of families that have been isolated for eight months, and the creation of conditions for the immediate provision of all necessary medical assistance to Armenians in need!” 


Over the past week, the EU monitoring mission in Armenia has come under great scrutiny. This tweet from August 14 reflected how it can be most useful, dispelling the constant accusations coming from Azerbaijan against Armenia in order to create grounds for another invasion. Hardly a day goes by without Azerbaijan claiming it has been attacked, to which, the Armenian Ministry of Defense backed up by the EU, responded, this does not correspond to reality. 

However, the very next day, the mission severely risked its credibility after the Armenian Ministry of Defense announced that the EU mission monitoring Armenia’s borderlands had come under fire from Azerbaijan. The mission did not just refute the report, but even photoshopped a “FALSE” stamp over the initial tweet, mirroring CivilNet’s own approach to fact checking social media tweets, an aggressive approach the monitors had never used before. What came next was even more shocking:  within an hour a video by an EU monitor, recorded in a bunker on the border, stating “they’re shooting at us”. In light of this revelation, the monitoring mission’s social media, which is run out of Armenia, tweeted the above “correction”, with a vaguely worded statement walking back the initial claim the Armenian Ministry of Defense had lied. You can read CivilNet’s explainer for a further breakdown of what happened and its fallout. 

A lot of anger was also directed at the EU Commission’s Director for the Eastern Neighborhood Lawrence Meredith, as at the height of the warnings about genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh, he published a very fluffy thread about the wonders of visiting Azerbaijan. He also published one last month about visiting Armenia, which is also an EU Eastern Neighborhood partner, so this was likely part of a series and not specific promotion for Azerbaijan alone, however the timing couldn’t have looked worse. In addition, some criticized Meredith’s hypocrisy in condemning Belarus for not having free and fair elections, while promoting Azerbaijan. 

The UN Security Council discussed the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh on August 16, which resulted in an extremely viral moment. In the days that followed, Armenian social media couldn’t stop memeing about the Azerbaijan ambassador Yashar Aliyev’s response to the august body, after being told time and again Azerbaijan must open the Lachin corridor. Aliyev maintained that the allegations of a humanitarian disaster are completely unfounded because there are videos on social media from there in which “people are happy” at celebrations with “very tasty cookies”. Azerbaijani voices on social media largely celebrated the farce as having completely shut down Armenia’s case, as evidence by the fact no UN resolution on the matter was passed, even though there was no intention of putting forward a resolution that day. 

The most ridiculous part of this whole approach to refuting the blockade is that there have been a number of Azerbaijani tweeters, in particular one known as @KonulikShahin who is a self-described Freddie Mercury fan living in Turkey, who has been trawling through Stepanakert-based social media such as its top restaurants flagging any time a photo of a piece or fruit or drink has appeared as a means of refuting the claims of blockade. The problems with this approach are manifold, for example anybody can tag a photo as being in Stepanakert whether it is or not, there is no way to know whether the photos were newly taken or months old, and of course that social media does not reflect real life or the majority of peoples’ experiences. It in fact mirrors Russian propaganda of sharing glamorous photos from Ukraine in order to deny there is any suffering there because of the invasion. While Armenians on social media condemned and eventually learned to ignore Konulik’s denialism, to see this absurdity rise to the level of the UN was a bit of a shock. 

According to this thread from Cavid Aga, this hostility towards the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh is not restricted to social media. He notes that, despite the lip service given to “reintegration of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians”, most Azerbaijanis he has spoken with don’t care about them at all and would rather see them leave for good. They generally see the humanitarian crisis as a self-inflicted one, a hunger strike of sorts, thanks to the successful propaganda surrounding the Aghdam road, even though no such aid has ever materialized there. 

As the famous saying goes, “if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry”, and the levity over the “tasty cookies” was a needed respite from the daily horrors occurring in Nagorno-Karabakh, every single one intended by Azerbaijan to create as much suffering and misery as possible. The latest stems from a separate horrific tragedy, a bus collision in Armenia which killed 11. One of the victims, Helen Dadayan, was from Nagorno-Karabakh where her family lives and intends to bring her body back for burial. However, despite its claims that no such blockade exists, Azerbaijan has blocked her body from being sent to her family. 

Such a blatant display of inhumanity has received criticism from even some of Baku’s think-tankers, such as Shujaat Ahmadzada of the Topchubashov Center. Though Azerbaijan often speaks of Armenians having the same rights and guarantees as any other Azerbaijani citizen – not reassuring – it is clear Armenians are enemies and even grieving families are made to suffer

Finally, it is worth noting that one of the largest history-related accounts on Twitter recently tweeted about the Armenian Genocide of 1915, receiving over 1.5 million views. The significance of this post is now more relevant than ever. 

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