The thought of history repeating itself, and Armenians, once again, being subjected to a genocide was unfathomable until September, 2023 when Azerbaijan launched a large-scale and deadly attack on Artsakh forcing almost all of its Armenians population to flee and become displaced, thus advancing its decades-long campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
After all with the much-delayed and eventual recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the United States in 2021, who would think that such a campaign of annihilation would be allowed to take shape and succeed.
Yet the warning signs were there, as were the deaf ears — and the blind eyes — of the international community, which sat by and watched as an entire race was forcibly driven out of its ancestral homeland.
The systematic and indiscriminate killings of Armenians by Azerbaijan began in 1988 when, in response to the just calls by the people of Artsakh for self-determination, the entire Armenian population of the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait was butchered in broad daylight. Such acts of aggression against Armenians, which came to be known as pogroms, were repeated in Kirovabad, Baku, Maragha, Shahumyan and Getashen and continued throughout decades by Azerbaijan’s attacks on Artsakh that culminated in the deadly 44-Day War in 2020.
Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor — and all of Artsakh — in December, 2022 foreshadowed the eventual doom that would set upon the Armenian Nation, once again, despite the presence of some 5,000 Russian troops whose task was to safeguard the population from Azerbaijan and its anti-Armenian campaign.
Soon after the blockade, Artsakh leaders appealed to the international community, saying the blockade had become a virtual concentration camp, with Artsakh citizens being deprived of the basic necessities to survive. The muted calls by the international community urging Baku to end the blockade fell on deaf ears, and even an order by the International Court of Justice to immediately end the blockade was ignored. As were warnings by leading international human rights experts, such as the former ICJ chief justice Luis Moreno Ocampo, who, in no uncertain terms, said that the people of Artsakh were facing genocide.
But, let’s look around us and we will see that lessons of history have fallen to the wayside.
Systematic and deliberate campaigns to exterminate indigenous populations around the world seem to have become the norm and not the exception and world powers are acting in the same manner as they did when Ottoman Turks were slaughtering Armenians in 1915.
The United States, the European Union and other world powers that claim to have the highest regard for human rights are throwing around the word genocide as they see fit and not as Raphael Lemkin (who coined the word by referencing the Armenian tragedy of 1915) meant: the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
In the eyes of the world powers, Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine, but Israel is not committing one in Gaza. The International Criminal Court is issuing arrest warrants against President Vladimir Putin of Russia for committing war crimes, but similar actions are not taken against Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, who not only orchestrated the campaign to ethnically cleanse Artsakh of its population, but publicly has warned that he will do it again.
It is this selective approach to genocide that has not only perpetuated — and dare we say normalized — the act, but has ensured that those who commit genocide are not punished.
We were supposed to be grateful to President Joe Biden for recognizing the Armenian Genocide in 2021, “so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.” We were supposed to forget that, for 106 years, the United States was not only complacent but also complicit in Turkey’s campaign of denial.
The U.S. has not been “ever-vigilant” in their pledge toward “a world unstained by the daily evils of bigotry and intolerance, where human rights are respected, and where all people are able to pursue their lives in dignity and security,” as President Biden said in 2021.
There is disturbing footnote as we commemorate the 109th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Whereas in 1915, there was no independent Armenia and a government that was the guarantor of all Armenians, in 2023 there was.
When the people of Artsakh were enduring the horrors inflicted upon them by Azerbaijan, and living through a chokehold that was the blockade, the government of Armenia, headed by its prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, was vocally recognizing Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity that included Baku’s sovereignty over Artsakh, effectively providing Aliyev and his regime an opportunity to fulfill its policy of ethnic cleansing.
More recently, Pashinyan and his supporters have taken on a more dangerous approach as they advance their “Crossroads for Peace” agenda. They are diminishing Armenia’s history by saying that Armenia must confine — and view — itself to its current borders, with one Pashinyan ally, Andranik Kocharyan, calling for the verification of the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide.
Now, more than ever, history and historical justice must become the anchors on which we, as Armenians, must rest on. It is OUR history that is going to shape OUR future. It is OUR collective experience as victims and survivors of the Armenian Genocide that is going shape how we collectively pursue justice for the unresolved crime of genocide against our people, both in 1915 and in 2023.
As we honor the 1,500,000 victims of the Armenian Genocide, we also steadfastly express our solidarity with our more than 150,000 forcibly displaced sisters and brothers of Artsakh who have experienced a modern-day genocide.
