The Armenian People Face the Threat of New Genocide Again: Artsakh Foreign Ministry

On April 24, the entire Armenian nation commemorates the memory of over 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Between 1915 and 1923, the Young Turks and the Kemalist regime carried out mass killings and deportations of Armenians in several phases. The Armenian Genocide was part of the pan-Turkism policy adopted by the leaders of the Ottoman Empire, which aimed to seize new territories through the slaughter, Turkification, or forced relocation of indigenous Christian Armenians.

This is stated in a declaration by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh: “The failure to prevent the first genocide of the 20th century and its impunity unfortunately led to the implementation of new genocides. Even today, more than a century after that brutal crime, the Armenian people are again faced with the threat of new genocide. The authoritarian government of Azerbaijan, with the assistance of Turkey, continues to pursue a genocidal policy against Armenians. A vivid example of this is Turkey’s overt support and direct involvement in the military aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan against Artsakh in September 2020. During the 44-day war, significant parts of the territory of the Republic of Artsakh were occupied, and numerous war crimes and gross violations of international humanitarian law were committed, including the brutal killings, beheadings of civilians and prisoners of war, desecration of the bodies of the deceased, and other inhumane acts.

Continuing its program of ethnic cleansing in Artsakh, Azerbaijan has kept the 120,000 residents of Artsakh under blockade for more than four months, putting them before the dilemma of extinction or forced abandonment of their homeland. At the same time, in order to advance its genocidal policies, Azerbaijan continues to violate the fundamental rights of the people of Artsakh by all possible means in the eyes of the international community and again in an atmosphere of complete impunity and lawlessness.

Since the implementation of the Armenian Genocide, the international community has taken on the obligation and developed appropriate tools to prevent genocides and massive human rights violations to exclude their recurrence. Today, it is imperative that the UN Security Council employs these tools to prevent the destruction of the Artsakh people as such and to protect their fundamental rights.

Once again bowing before the memory of the holy martyrs of the Armenian Genocide, we reaffirm our commitment to restoring historical justice.