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AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Nagorno-Karabakh, where the president of the self-proclaimed republic at the center of a decades-long dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia announced this week that the government will dissolve by January 1. This came just days after Azerbaijan launched a military assault to seize the territory, which is largely made up of ethnic Armenians, following a 35-year struggle for political autonomy. Hundreds were killed in the attack. Now Armenian officials report that more than half of Nagorno-Karabakh’s 120,000 residents have fled to Armenia. Thousands remain without food, shelter and sources of clean drinking water. This is one of the refugees from Goris, Armenia.
ALPINE MOVSYAN: [translated] We don’t know what will happen to us next. We don’t know what the government plans to do with us. There is not a single chance to return. If there were chances, we wouldn’t even go. It’s very dangerous there.
AMY GOODMAN: In response to the worsening crisis, USAID head Samantha Power said the US would provide $11.5 million in aid and called on Azerbaijan to ease access to humanitarian workers. Armenia has warned of an ethnic cleansing campaign in the disputed region.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan arrested Nagorno-Karabakh’s former head of government on Wednesday as he tried to enter Armenia.
For further information, please contact Roubina Margossian, Editor-in-Chief at EVN Report, an independent media company based in Armenia. She reported from Nagorno-Karabakh during the 2020 war. She comes to us from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Roubina. Can you describe exactly what is happening and also provide historical context to a global audience?
ROUBINA MARGOSSIAN: Well, that’s a big question. This is a question that goes back so long [inaudible]. But let me start with what is happening today.
This is obviously ethnic cleansing. If we just listen to the numbers – look at the numbers of people who left Nagorno-Karabakh, their homeland, their centuries-old homeland, last night at 10 p.m. there were 78,000 people; At 10:00 a.m. 88,000 people left, so 10,000 in 12 hours. These are people who simply leave everything behind and get out by any means possible, even in cars that are not functional.
“Why is this happening?” is basically the question we will try to answer, but there is no clear and short answer. However, this comes after 10 months in which these people are starving, under blockade, threatened and their lives are under constant threat. This happens after they have been held hostage by Azerbaijan and are suddenly told they can leave Azerbaijan after an attack or reintegrate into Azerbaijan – which is like the Azerbaijani formal term “reintegrate”. And on September 19, Azerbaijan organized, as you called it, a lightning attack and called it an “anti-terror measure,” which sounds a lot like Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine. Hundreds of civilians died after Azerbaijan’s special operation in Nagorno-Karabakh.
And now these people have no choice whether to do it – they have no choice. If they want to survive, they have to leave. And they leave. And it is assumed that in a few days there will not be a single Armenian left in Artsakh. Those who remain are likely to be arrested, as we saw in the Ruben Vardanyan case. He was arrested – at the checkpoint and in the Lachin Corridor. Portal has reported that Azerbaijan has extensive blacklists of people they are willing to seek and arrest. No one is really sure what charges will be filed, trumped up charges. So that is currently the situation on the ground. People are fleeing for their lives because they always know that there is no surviving Azerbaijan.
As for the story, well –
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you – let me first ask about the significance of the statement by the head of Nagorno-Karabakh that the territory – that Nagorno-Karabakh, as it is now called, will cease to exist by the end of the year, and the fact that he was arrested while trying to enter Armenia.
ROUBINA MARGOSSIAN: Well, we don’t know that he was arrested himself. There is no confirmed news – this is not confirmed because we actually have no news about it – from Stepanakert as a whole. The few independent journalists who were still there and reporting on the situation have already left. So, in effect, we have no communication with Nagorno-Karabakh. Those who are still there, some officials we have no news about. We don’t know if they are there or if they managed to get out. We don’t hear anything from them. And nothing is confirmed at this point.
And your question was about dissolving the government? Is that the question?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
ROUBINA MARGOSSIAN: Well, they have until January 1st to do so. But the issue here is not so much whether or not a republic that no one has recognized will still exist, whether the institutions that people have built over 32 years exist, and whether there is a democracy that would have can and did give and – well, a more established democracy than Azerbaijan. And it’s not just me saying that; Every human rights report says that even the elections in Nagorno-Karabakh were freer and fairer than ever before in Azerbaijan.
So it’s basically the death of this democracy if you want an explanation of what’s happening, why Nagorno-Karabakh hasn’t been recognized by anyone. And if it ceases to exist, that technically means nothing other than a humanitarian catastrophe, the death of a possible democracy – a democracy, an emerging democracy, and also simply a failure of human rights everywhere, from whatever perspective contemporary human rights and from a historical perspective. This is a humanitarian failure.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s why Armenia over the weekend asked the United Nations for help in monitoring the rights of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, arguing that they are at risk of ethnic cleansing. The Armenian prime minister said he needed guarantees from Azerbaijan that citizens – that civilians would be protected. That’s what was said.
PRIME MINISTER NIKOL PASHINYAN: [translated] Unless real living conditions and effective mechanisms to protect against ethnic cleansing are created for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh in their homes, there is a high probability that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will consider exile from their homeland as the only way to save their lives Identity is increasing significantly.
AMY GOODMAN: So is this happening? And, Roubina, you just came back from Goris, where many refugees come. Describe what you found.
ROUBINA MARGOSSIAN: It happened. It’s almost done. And it wasn’t just last week that Armenia warned about this. Armenia has been warning about this for years. And at least for 10 months, they say. We had three meetings of the UN Security Council. But as we know and as the entire situation has shown, through this action, Azerbaijan has effectively proven that the highest platforms of humanitarian law, the highest platforms in the world, the foreign ministries of dozens and dozens of countries, saying their words means nothing. Your resolutions won’t achieve much. Basically they are – Azerbaijan has shown with what is happening now that these platforms, these countries even, their foreign ministries are bankrupt and especially everything they say is null and void. And I would say that’s great news for every perpetrator regime in the world, and we see this happening everywhere. This is the victory of a dictatorship over democracy. And this is a dictatorship that has already targeted Armenia.
What is happening now at the border, what happened in Goris, these are people – people made a two-hour, less than two-hour journey in 36 hours. These are people who just came with whatever they had, whatever they could pack, and whatever means they could. These are people who were just crammed into the back of pickup trucks, into the back of trucks used to transport livestock, just to produce it. They entered a corridor with no communications for 36 hours under enemy surveillance.
Now they are arriving in Armenia. What is the situation here? They don’t have any – the government is there. There are, so to speak, several humanitarian contact points where they can receive comprehensive assistance and instructions on where to go. You will receive instructions on how and where to find accommodation. And they are also promised a kind of livelihood and ultimately jobs. But these people – Amy, I can tell you – are terrified. They simply survived. And I would prefer not to call them anything other than genocide survivors. And that is a very difficult word for every Armenian.
And now they’re asked, “Well, where do you want to live?” And they say, “Nowhere on the border, because we can’t keep facing the same enemy.” And as you know, most of Armenia’s borders are basically in sections with Azerbaijan and Turkey. Technically speaking, there is no place in Armenia that is not a border. If you’re sitting in Yerevan and looking at Mount Ararat, that’s Turkey. And when people say, “We don’t want to go into border communities because we just can’t stand it,” and it’s like it’s some other humanitarian disaster. And I listened to your introduction. The world is full of them. The world has failed time and time again in this regard.
And yes, Samantha Power was here and the US promised $11.5 million in aid. And I don’t understand this term “humanitarian access”. Where? To a place where there are no more people? To a place where, as Aliyev announced today, about 2,300 Azerbaijanis have already moved into the houses, probably still warm from the Armenians who were there? And, you know, this is a kind of catastrophe whose failures the world can easily forgive, because if people come to Armenia as Armenian citizens, as Armenians, they will not knock on the doors of Europe. You won’t be camping anywhere. They will live with themselves, and it will not be a painful sight for the world for decades. So it won’t be like in Shatila, like in Lebanon, with the Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: Roubina?
ROUBINA MARGOSSIAN: So, that – yes?
AMY GOODMAN: You see this – you’ve said that you see this as a proxy war, with Turkey and Israel on one side. And Turkey and Israel are – explain the role of Turkey, Israel, Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
ROUBINA MARGOSSIAN: Actually it’s pretty clear. That is [inaudible] Israel. Israel has already been a kind of military partner for Azerbaijan. Before September 19th, when the attack on Nagorno-Karabakh began, we saw – we reported on increasing fighting on the part of Israel with military equipment and more, you know, controls at the borders. And that comes from Israel. The same thing had happened in 2021. The number of flights from Israel to Azerbaijan was truly indescribable.
As for Turkey, Turkey – well, there’s not much to say. It is, as they call themselves, one nation, two countries. Turkey, obviously a partner of Azerbaijan, always seems to be very vocal about its support for Azerbaijan. Turkey is also clear about its support. Turkey coordinated its normalization process with Armenia and Azerbaijan. So there was –
AMY GOODMAN: So there is Turkey and Israel –
ROUBINA MARGOSSIAN: – a way how [inaudible] exactly there.
AMY GOODMAN: Turkey and Israel support Azerbaijan, and Russia has a mutual defense pact with Armenia. Where do you think this will lead? What do you think would lead to a lasting and fairly negotiated peace in this last minute, Roubina?
ROUBINA MARGOSSIAN: I think the negotiated – just negotiated peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, if you ask the question, well, the Karabakh conflict was a big part of those negotiations, it’s like constantly being dragged into the peace talks. Well, the thing is, it is more than clear that Russia, as political scientists say, has ceded its power to Armenia over and over again. And now – these are my words – by punishing Armenia for its Western orientation, by practically everyone abdicating – this humanitarian crisis in Artsakh would have been and should have been prevented if the Russian peace mission had not failed. Well, it is thanks to the watchful eye and helpful hand of the Russian peacekeeping mission and the Russian Federation that this has happened as it has, at this time, because Russia is increasingly dissatisfied and concerned about Armenia’s western pivot and, Well, the West will first of all be present in Armenia. This also applies to the UN monitoring mission on Armenia’s borders. So Russia loses Armenia, and therefore if Armenia loses Artsakh, for which it has fought and died for three decades, perhaps Armenia would come to its senses.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll have to leave it at that, but we’ll keep reporting on it. Roubina Margossian, editor-in-chief at EVN Report, an independent media company based in Armenia, speaks to us from Yerevan.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. We will soon speak to Ukrainian-American journalist Lev Golinkin. He is the one who exposed the Ukrainian World War II veteran who was honored in the Canadian House of Commons last week and revealed that he was actually a Nazi. Stay with us.