Baku Clearly Shows Rejection of Negotiations with Artsakh, Says Artsakh Foreign Ministry

The Foreign Ministry of Artsakh has issued a statement regarding the right of the people of Artsakh to self-determination, which we present below.

“It has been 100 days since the illegal blockade of Artsakh by Azerbaijan began, with the ultimate aim of eliminating the people of Artsakh as such by expelling them from their historic homeland. Accompanied by the use of force and terrorism, Azerbaijan pursues a consistent policy of suppressing the self-determination right of the people of Artsakh through violence. At the same time, the Azerbaijani authorities openly demonstrate that they reject negotiations as a means of finding any resolution to the issue.

It should be noted that for several decades, Azerbaijan has been striving to rid itself of the people of Artsakh and resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by force. The first victims of such a criminal policy were, in particular, the Armenians living in Azerbaijan during the Soviet years. The organized mass deportations of Armenians from Azerbaijan by the local authorities between 1988-1990, accompanied by massacres, tortures, and pogroms, marked the beginning of a new phase in Azerbaijan's anti-Armenian policy. By 1991, Azerbaijani authorities continued the deportations of Armenians from Artsakh, a process that has various manifestations and continues to this day.

Later, Azerbaijan, in violation of the UN Charter and international law norms and principles, resorted to direct military aggression against Artsakh three times, attempting to rid itself of the people of Artsakh and suppress their right to freedom and self-determination. All three wars unleashed against Artsakh have been accompanied by massive human rights violations and war crimes, including the deliberate killing of civilians, extrajudicial executions and torture of prisoners of war and civilians, indiscriminate attacks, the use of weapons prohibited by international conventions, and targeting of vital civilian infrastructure.

As a result of the aggression that broke out in 2020 and the occupation of significant parts of Artsakh, about 40,000 residents of the republic were subjected to forced displacement. The remaining civilians in the territories now under Azerbaijani control have been brutally killed by Azerbaijani servicemen. Azerbaijani provocations and attacks against the peaceful population of Artsakh, including deliberate killings, continue even after the signing of the trilateral declaration on ceasefire on November 9, 2020.

The widespread and systematic violations of the rights of the people of Artsakh by Azerbaijan, including mass killings, deportations, torture, and other inhumane acts, are not only tolerated but also directed at the state level. The Azerbaijani authorities do not even conceal their criminal intentions to carry out ethnic cleansing and genocide against the people of Artsakh. Numerous public statements by the President of Azerbaijan testify to this intent. The last such statement was made on March 18, 2023, during a provocative visit to the occupied Armenian village of Talish, whose entire population was subjected to forced displacement. Both the visit and the aggressive and warlike statements made by Azerbaijan's top leadership during it indicate that official Baku plans to apply the scenario executed in the occupied village of Talish throughout Artsakh.

Simultaneously, since the 1990s, throughout all negotiations between the parties to the conflict, Azerbaijan has consistently sabotaged all efforts by international mediators, particularly the co-chairing countries of the OSCE Minsk Group, aimed at a peaceful resolution of the Azerbaijan-Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on norms of international law, consistently withdrawing from agreements reached on compromise solutions at the last moment. Furthermore, after the aggression in 2020, Azerbaijani authorities completely rejected peace negotiations, qualifying issues concerning the lives and rights of the people of Artsakh as their internal affair.

The targeted policy of ethnic cleansing against the people of Artsakh by Azerbaijan demonstrates the necessity for the international community to reconsider its approaches to the status of Artsakh and the political settlement of the Azerbaijan-Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The scale and severity of the crimes perpetrated by Azerbaijan against the people of Artsakh at the state level and the ongoing genocidal policies demand decisive and urgent measures from the international community, including responsible bodies for ensuring international peace and security.

We are convinced that at this stage, developing additional legally binding obligations regarding the peaceful resolution of the conflict, enshrining the principles of non-use of force or threat of force, equality of peoples, and self-determination as the basis for negotiations, as well as restoring the international mechanism for direct negotiations between Artsakh and Azerbaijan, are consistent with the requirements of international law and the universal commitment to the protection of human rights worldwide. The universal recognition of the inalienable right of the people of Artsakh to self-determination is the most effective means by which the international community can guarantee the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Artsakh.

We remind that, according to international law and practice, the denial of the right to self-determination and the use of violent repression that is accompanied by massive human rights violations, as well as the rejection of negotiations as a means of conflict resolution, are sufficient grounds for recognizing the right of a people to establish an independent state.”