Accept Azerbaijan’s political control or leave Nagorno-Karabakh. That’s essentially what Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is telling the Armenian population of this remote enclave that lies within Azerbaijan’s borders, The Washington Post reports.
But leaders of the Armenian majority there argue that Aliyev’s tactics amount to genocide — and many residents appear ready to starve rather than submit.
Aliyev was emphatic in an Aug. 2 interview with Euronews: “People who live in Karabakh … they live in Azerbaijan. They should choose whether to live as citizens as [an] ethnic minority … or to leave. So this is their choice.”
In an apparent effort to enforce sovereignty, Azerbaijan has been blockading the road from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, known as the “Lachin Corridor” since June 15. Without this route, the Armenian population has lost access to food, fuel, medicine and other essential supplies. The Azerbaijanis say they are ready to ship food from Azerbaijan, but Armenians fear it might be a trap — a first step toward integration by force — and they have blocked the Azerbaijani entry routes with concrete barriers.
Arayik Harutyunyan, the president of “Artsakh,” as Armenians call this region, appealed for international support against what he called a “genocidal policy” in a statement this week: “The blockade of the Lachin Corridor is not an isolated incident. It should be regarded as part of a planned, large-scale and coordinated policy by Azerbaijan aimed at the destruction of the people of Artsakh as a whole.” He requested a meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
