At the session of the UN Security Council, RA Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan announced that more than 10,000 people were forcibly displaced in Artsakh. He noted that during the shelling an eight-year boy has gone missing in one of the settlements of Nagorno-Karabakh, his brother ten years old was killed and his body has not been even possible to take out from the village. The other brother was injured.
“These are only two examples of numerous cases. In the eyes of Azerbaijan these children are terrorists, and Azerbaijan’s actions, missiles, armored vehicles, artillery and UAVs were directed against those children, their parents and grandparents. The Azerbaijani social media segment is full of calls to find the missing children and women, to rape them, dismember and feed them to dogs. Azerbaijani users are sharing the profiles of Armenian women from Nagorno-Karabakh on social media making biddings on who will get those women to rape, when they are taken under Azerbaijani custody,” Ararta Mirzoyan said.
According to him this was feasible, the clear signs were there. We have been alarming for a long time now. The international community refused to take it seriously enough.
“The current aggression came as a culmination of a 10-months-long blockade of the Lachin corridor and forced starvation imposed on the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. Severe shortage of food, medicine, fuel, natural gas, electricity and other essential goods had already brought the vulnerable people of Nagorno-Karabakh to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe.
One should be naive to think that this was not precisely thought through ever since or even before the institutionalization of the inhumane blockade with the aim of bringing down the will and ability of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to resist and maintain their lives and livelihood in their ancestral homeland.
The Azerbaijani aggression that unfolded with explicit barbarity and deliberate targeting of civilian populations and infrastructure was the final act of this tragedy aimed at the forced exodus of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh,” Ararat Morzoyan stated.
He mentioned when Azerbaijan blocked the Lachin Corridor and we called for urgent meeting of the UNSC in December 2022 – this Council failed to react adequately. “When the International Court of Justice on February 22 and July 6, 2023, adopted legally binding orders and they were disrespected by Azerbaijan- this Council as an august body meant to ensure the implementation of ICJ orders failed to react adequately. When in April Azerbaijan installed illegal check-point in the Lachin Corridor and later started to kidnap people, including ones under the protection of international humanitarian law,- international community failed to undertake adequate measures.
When Armenia called again for another UNSC urgent session in August 2023 – warning about the fragile security and humanitarian situation and calling the Council to use its toolbox to address all the issues and not let people of Nagorno-Karabakh behind, this Council failed to react adequately,” Ararat Mirzoyan said.
