Worthy Christian News > World News > Christian Armenians Fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh (Worthy News-Investigation)

Christian Armenians Fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh (Worthy News-Investigation)

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

YEREVAN/STEPANAKERT/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – A massive exodus of Christian ethnic Armenians was underway in Nagorno-Karabakh, days after mainly Muslim Azerbaijan seized the majority ethnic Armenian enclave, witnesses observed.

Armenia said late Sunday that at least 1,050 people made homeless by the fighting already crossed into the country from Nagorno-Karabakh. Earlier painful scenes were observed with people leaving their destroyed homes.

Armenia pledged to help those without houses, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether it could handle the thousands that were seen leaving.

The Nagorno-Karabakh leadership said the region’s 120,000 Armenians “did not want to live as part of Azerbaijan for fear of persecution and ethnic cleansing.”

They have lacked food and medicines for months after Azerbaijan effectively blocked a key road into the territory ahead of its offensive that killed dozens of people.

Those with fuel escaping the volatile enclave started to drive down the Lachin corridor toward the border with Armenia, reporters saw in the Karabakh capital known as Stepanakert by Armenia and Khankendi by Azerbaijan.

Dozens of cars drove from the capital toward the corridor’s mountainous curves.

24-HOUR CONFLICT

The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia, were forced into a ceasefire last week after a 24-hour military operation by the much larger Azerbaijani military.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region in the South Caucasus recognized as part of Azerbaijan but controlled by ethnic Armenians for three decades.

The enclave has been supported by Armenia – but also by their ally, Russia, which has had hundreds of soldiers there for years.

Five Russian peacekeepers were killed – alongside at least 200 ethnic Armenians and dozens of Azerbaijani soldiers – as Azerbaijan’s army swept in last week, Worthy News learned.

Previously, Azerbaijan already gained back swathes of territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh in a six-week conflict in 2020, following another lengthy, bloody armed conflict in the 1990s.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who backed the Azeris with weaponry in the 2020 conflict, was due on Monday to meet Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev in Nakhchivan — a strip of Azeri territory nestled between Armenia, Iran and Turkey.

Erdogan has said he supported the aims of Azerbaijan’s latest military operation but played no part in it. The Armenians are not accepting Azerbaijan’s promise to guarantee their rights as the region is integrated.

HISTORIC LANDS

“Ninety-nine point nine percent prefer to leave our historic lands,” David Babayan, an adviser to Samvel Shahramanyan, president of the self-styled Republic of Artsakh, told Reuters news agency.

“The fate of our poor people will go down in history as a disgrace and a shame for the Armenian people and for the whole civilized world. Those responsible for our fate will one day have to answer before God for their sins,” he added.

In televised remarks, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan echoed those sentiments, saying many inside the enclave would “see expulsion from the homeland as the only way out” unless Azerbaijan provided “real living conditions.”

The country should have “effective mechanisms of protection against ethnic cleansing,” he stressed.

Christian aid workers active in the region told Worthy News earlier, however, that since December 2022, “Muslim-majority Azerbaijan” has besieged Nagorno-Karabakh.

They have been “blockading the Lachin Corridor, the only route into the enclave from Armenia,” noted Christian charity Barnabas Aid.

Senior church leaders warned last month that “mass starvation” was likely among the population, Worthy News learned.

“Their concern was echoed in an emergency report published on September 5 that stated a new Armenian Genocide “may already be taking place” in the enclave, Barnabas Aid added.

‘MODERN-DAY TRAGEDY’

Earlier, Baroness Caroline Cox, a legislator of Britain’s House of Lords and patron of Barnabas Aid, described it as a “modern-day tragedy” unfolding.

Despite Azerbaijan’s public reassurances, there were fears Sunday about the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh. Witnesses said only one aid delivery of 70 tonnes of food had been allowed through since separatists accepted a ceasefire and agreed to disarm last week.

However, Armenian authorities in the region on Saturday said about 150 tonnes of humanitarian cargo from Russia and another 65 tonnes of flour shipped by the International Committee of the Red Cross had arrived in the region.

The differences in numbers could not immediately be reconciled, but the aid appeared far from enough. Ethnic Armenian leaders said thousands remained without food or shelter and slept in basements, school buildings, or outside.

On Sunday, ethnic Armenians who could leave appeared to use a ceasefire to leave everything behind and start a new future in Armenia. But it was unclear how much time they had with Azerbaijan’s defense ministry, saying that they had “confiscated more military equipment including a large number of rockets, artillery shells, mines and ammunition.”

In his television address, the Armenian prime minister hinted that Russia had not come to Armenia’s defense in the conflict amid concerns Moscow has been distracted by its invasion of Ukraine.

His comments echoed criticism that Moscow had effectively handed Nagorno-Karabakh over to Azerbaijan – a charge Russia’s foreign minister has described as “ludicrous.”

TRUST BUILDING?

“Yerevan and Baku actually did settle the situation,” Sergei Lavrov told the United Nations General Assembly in New York. “Time has come for mutual trust-building.”

However, that mutual trust wasn’t noticed Sunday in Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies in an area that, over centuries, has come under the sway of Persians, Turks, Russians, Ottomans, and Soviets.

It was claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia after the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, historians say. In Soviet times, it was designated an autonomous region within Azerbaijan.

As the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, the mainly Christian Armenians there threw off Azeri control and captured neighboring territory in what is now known as the First Karabakh War. From 1988 to 1994, about 30,000 people were reportedly killed, and over 1 million — mostly Azeris — were displaced.

In 2020, after decades of skirmishes, Azerbaijan won a decisive 44-day so-called Second Karabakh War.

That armed conflict ended with a Russian-brokered peace deal Armenians accuse Moscow of failing to guarantee, leading eventually to last week’s decisive battle.