News - Armenia’s Pashinyan: Some pretend they don’t understand why Karabakh Armenians left their homes en masse

It is sad, extremely sad, that despite hundreds of alarms, decisions of the International Court of Justice, resolutions of the European Parliament, PACE, and the parliaments of individual countries, appeals of executive bodies, the international community, we all were unable to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said this during his address Tuesday at the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. "The Government of Armenia and the European Parliament have 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 a relevant decision. “We initiated three discussions related to the issue in the UN Security Council, but the discussions did not have any practical results and here, Nagorno-Karabakh is already depopulated. In the conditions of inactivity of the Russian peacekeeping force, more than 100 thousand Armenians left their homes and homeland in Nagorno-Karabakh within a week, another 20 thousand had been forced to abandon Nagorno-Karabakh immediately after the 44-day war, and a part of them had no chance to return to Nagorno-Karabakh due to the illegal blocking of the Lachin Corridor, which started in December 2022. "And today some pretend that they do not understand why the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh left their homes en masse. This 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," Pashinyan stated. "Since December 2022, during the period of the illegal blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh have been deprived of external supplies of gas, electricity, fuel, food, baby food, medicine, hygienic and other essential goods, while civilians engaged in agricultural work have been targeted by the Azerbaijani armed forces. “Since December 2022, we have alerted dozens of times about Azerbaijan's plan: close the Lachin Corridor, starve people, increase military, informational and psychological pressure, then open the Lachin Corridor, forcing 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 over the depopulation of Nagorno-Karabakh that took place in September. At the same time, I must thank the European Parliament for naming what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh by its name. This is important in terms of protecting the future rights of people who have been deprived of their motherland," the Armenian premier emphasized.