Armenia denounces the “illegal blockade” of the Lachín corridor and warns of “ethnic cleansing”

Yerevan accuses Azerbaijan of trying to “create conditions incompatible with life” for the population of Nagorno Karabagh

July 13 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Government of Armenia has denounced the “illegal blockade” by Azerbaijan of the Lachin corridor and has warned that this “punitive” measure by Baku seeks to “create conditions incompatible with life” for the population of Nagorno Karabakh to their “ethnic cleansing”.

“Seven months have already passed since the Azeri authorities illegally blocked the Lachin corridor, a lifeline connecting Nagorno Karabagh with the outside world,” said the Armenian Foreign Ministry, which has accused Baku of “directly violating the trilateral communiqué of November 2020”, signed after the end of the Second Nagorno Karabagh War.

Likewise, it has regretted that the Azeri authorities “clearly ignore the calls of the civilized community to end the blockade in the Lachín corridor”, including “legally binding orders by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of February 22 and on July 6 (2023)”.

“During these months, the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh as a result of the blockade of the Lachin corridor has continued to deteriorate. It is being exacerbated by the months-long cutoff of gas and electricity supplies by Azerbaijan,” the Armenian ministry said. .

Along these lines, he denounced that “since June 15, the food supply to Nagorno Karabagh has been completely stopped” and recalled that before the blockade in the Lachín corridor, the area “received approximately 400 tons of cargo.” “However, after December 12, the amount of food transported by the Russian peacekeeping contingent was reduced by tenfold,” he argued.

For this reason, it has warned that “at this time, the population of Nagorno Karabakh faces a real threat of famine, since the supply of all kinds of goods has been prohibited” and has added that Azerbaijan’s accusations of “smuggling ” in vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) “demonstrates the desperate situation of the population.”

The Azeri State Border Service indicated in a statement that its employees “have repeatedly detected during the last period attempts to smuggle various goods into ICRC vehicles”, before pointing out that “despite the fact that the ICRC was warned of this through official channels, the illegal actions continued and the necessary steps were not taken to prevent it”.

For its part, the ICRC said that it “is aware of the concerns about the transport of unauthorized goods” in the Lachín corridor and stressed that “it does not support these activities”, although it stressed that “no unauthorized material has been found in any vehicle owned by the ICRC”.

The Azeri Border Guard announced in April the installation of a “border post” in the Lachin corridor in response to the “transportation of Armenian personnel, ammunition, mines and other military equipment to illegal Armenian armed groups in Azerbaijan”, accusations rejected by Yerevan.

CALL FOR AN INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATION

On the other hand, the Armenian Foreign Ministry has stressed that the situation is “the same” in the health system, with “a clear shortage of medicines to provide adequate care.” “Many vulnerable groups, including pregnant women, cancer and diabetes patients, and children face serious health problems. There has already been an increase in death rates in Nagorno Karabagh,” he stressed.

“Only a few people who can reach Armenia through the ICRC to receive urgent medical attention. Both they and those accompanying them are subjected to humiliating procedures and degrading treatment, being recorded and exploited by the Azeri propaganda machine as a tool to falsely claim that there is unrestricted movement of people in the Lachín corridor,” he explained.

In this context, he has described as “unfortunate” that the international community and humanitarian organizations “have been unable to obtain humanitarian access to Nagorno Karabakh to carry out an adequate fact-finding mission and deliver humanitarian aid” and has called on the international community to “use all available tools to ensure the enforcement of the ICJ’s legally binding orders on the opening of the Lachín corridor.”

“This is crucial to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Nagorno Karabakh and to stop the policy of ethnic cleansing. The civilized world cannot and must not tolerate these actions and disregard for the legally binding orders of the ICJ,” the Foreign Ministry of ICJ has settled. Armenia.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have also exchanged in recent months numerous accusations of violating the 2020 ceasefire, which ended the Second Nagorno Karabakh War –after that of 1994–. The conflict ended in victory for Azerbaijan, which recovered territories taken by Armenia in the First Nagorno Karabagh War, including the important city of Shusha.

Since then, both countries have maintained various contacts to try to sign a peace agreement, although the talks have encountered various obstacles, including the situation around the Lachín corridor, which connects Armenia with the self-proclaimed republic of Arstaj. The area has the presence of Russian soldiers deployed as peacekeepers under the aforementioned ceasefire agreement.