“Enough is enough,” said Marlène Mourier the mayor of the French city of Bourg-les-Valence, who in a Facebook post on Wednesday revealed that she received threats from Azerbaijanis in August because her city has a “Friendship City” relationship with Shushi in Artsakh. She also said three Azerbaijani “henchmen” stormed city hall in late August demanding the Artsakh flag to be lowered.
“In Bourg-lès-Valence, we have no lessons to learn from Azerbaijan, a ‘petro-dictatorship’ ranked 168 out of 180 by Reporters Without Borders,” Mourier asserted in her post.
Mourier is the latest victim of intimidation and harassment by Azerbaijani around the world. Since the brazen attacks by Azerbaijani forces on civilian and military targets in Armenia’s Tavush Province, official Baku and its representatives around the world have targeted Armenians and their supporters around the world. Azeri mobs attacked Armenian-owned businesses in Moscow, set an Armenian-owned cafe on fire Kyiv, Ukraine and burned a vehicle belonging to the Armenian Embassy in Berlin. This was coupled with intimidation and violence against peaceful Armenian protesters in London, Washington and Los Angeles, as well as targeting Armenian institutions such as the Krouzian-Zekarian Vasbouragan School in San Francisco, which was covered in pro-Azerbaijani graffiti sparking a wave of hate crimes in that city that included arson at the Armenian Center next to the St. Gregory the Illuminator Church and shot being fired at the school on Saturday.
“When it comes to threats and intimidation against me, this is not Azerbaijan’s first attempt,” said Mourier in her Facebook post.
In a lengthy post the Mayor says “when it comes to threats and intimidation against me, Azerbaijan is at its best.”
“After putting me on a blacklist in 2014, they sent an agent to the city hall in 2016 to demand that I put an end to all friendly relations with the residents of the city of Shushi in Artsakh. It was in 2018 that I had to face a lawsuit brought by the state of Azerbaijan before the administrative court with the aim of invalidating the friendship charter that I signed on October 5, 2014 with Shushi, the historic capital of Artsakh, “ Mourier recounted the countless efforts of intimidation by Baku and its agents.
https://www.facebook.com/marlene.mourier/posts/10217541848726693
Mourier made it abundantly clear that despite the challenges and threats by Baku, the city’s friendship charter with Shushi remains in place, adding that “no one can prejudice the final decision of the City Council.”
“Today I am once again the subject of threats and intimidation to which I will not give in, let alone to the dictator in Baku or even his allies in Turkey,” said Mourier. “Indeed, three Azeri henchmen came to city hall on August 25 to order me to withdraw within an hour the Artsakh flag which flies alongside the flags of our twin cities with which we maintain friendship ties.”
She added that 15 minutes after the incident, an Azerbaijani Embassy official called her deputy and attempted to intimidate him by demanding that the Artskh flag be lowered.
“Azerbaijan, Aliyev and his associates must come to terms with the idea that friendship cannot be decreed or annulled and that residents of Bourg-lès-Valence have high esteem and regard for the residents of Shushi and for the people of Artsakh, in general,” Mourier stressed.
“Bourg-lès-Valence is not a land that can be conquered, but a land of resistance,” added the mayor.
“Here in France, in Bourg-lès-Valence, displaying the Artsakh flag is an act of solidarity with a people that Azerbaijan threatens daily with annihilation, demonstrating to the world that its only stated ambition is to complete the genocide of the Armenians of 1915, whose executors of yesterday are their allies today,” Mourier said.
“Neither Bourg-lès-Valence, nor its mayor, Marlène Mourier, will follow the orders of the Baku dictatorship!” she concluded.
In late August, the Komitas statue in Paris, which serves as a memorial to the Armenian Genocide victims, was vandalized by denialist graffiti. An investigation is underway.
All this retaliatory tough talk directed at these racist Azerbaijani vagabond henchmen is well-deserved and great but words alone won’t do. You need to take solid action against them. You need to charge them with attempted terrorist activities, detain and deport them back to their hate-filled artificial Azerbaijani cesspool. When it comes to these morally bankrupt and criminal pseudo-Turkish Azerbaijani “intimidators” I say throw civility out the window and deal with them in the language they understand best and that is the language of force. The more civil you are with them the louder they will bark. Make an example out of them!
Here are some of the reasons why Karabakh does not belong to Azerbaijan and Karabakh residents deserve freedom and self-determination.
( a ) The Capital of Armenia Yerevan is older than Rome. Cuneiform inscriptions about the city are well preserved. Yerevan was built in 782 BC, and Rome’s foundation dates back at around 750 BC. Thus, Yerevan is older than Rome for about 30 years. It seems we have found an even more ancient city. When the Armenian King Tigran the Great (140 – 55 BC) negotiated with the Roman general Pompey, there was no notion of a country called Azerbaijan anywhere in the world.” Azerbaijan in its current territory ONLY since 1918’’. In the times of Tigran the Great (95-55 BC) there were only two nations in the region – Armenians and Georgians
( b ) Karabakh was placed under Azerbaijan by Stalin to only form the Soviet Union economic system. States also turn a blind to the illegal way (thanks to dictators Stalin) Karabagh became part of Azerbaijan by wresting it from Armenia. It was Stalin who located the ancient Armenian land of Karabakh with 95 percent Armenian population under Azerbaijan as an ‘autonomous region’.
( c ) Karabakh was never part of Independent Azerbaijan before officially forming the Soviet Union (USSR) or after the fall of the Soviet Union.
( d ) Azerbaijan became an independent country from Soviet Union just like Karabakh did. Azerbaijan was an independent nation from 1918 to 1920 but was then incorporated into the Soviet Union. It became a constituent (union) republic in 1936. Azerbaijan declared sovereignty on September 23, 1989, and independence on August 30, 1991. Azerbaijan justifies its own self-determination from Soviet Union but not for Karabakh people with 95 % ethnic Armenians with their own language, traditions and customs.
( e ) Independent Azerbaijan has not exercised political authority over the region since 1988.
( f ) Ethnic Armenians make up roughly 95% of the population. No Christian nation should be ruled by neighboring Islam nation.
( g ) The Collapse of the Soviet Union disqualifies Azerbaijanis claims.
( h ) Mistakes of the past Soviet Union political decisions should not determine the future of Karabakh people.
( i ) Those who demand that Armenia give Karapagh to the trespassing Azeris should consider that 90% of Armenia is illegally occupied by Turkey, the state which describes its relationship with the Az as “two states, one nation.” It’s amazing Azerbaijan and Turkey which unprovoked conquered Armenia destroying the Armenian kingdom, killing and enslaving its people now prance as arbiters of international law. Two dictators demanding justice.
( j ) If everyone demands Turkey to return the lands of Western Armenia. If Greece, Bulgaria and other countries having territorial claims to Turkey demand their lands back, little will remain of Turkey!
( k ) Azerbaijan’s occupation of Nakhichevan, Shushi & Stepanakert, historically Armenian lands. Armenia has the right to recover its ancient occupied lands.
( l ) Destruction of many UNESCO-protected ancient Armenian stone carvings by Azerbaijanis.
( m ) Azerbaijan Human rights violations including: cultural cleansing; censorship, discrimination, xenophobia, mass massacres and use of cluster bomb sand 400 GRAD missiles fired onto the civilian population of Stepanakert.
( n ) When discussing Karabakh and Shusha in the 18th century, the Russian diplomat and historian S. M. Bronevskiy (Russian:С. М. Броневский) indicated in his Historical Notes that Karabakh, which he said “is located in Greater Armenia,” had as many as 30,000–40,000 armed Armenian men in 1796 19th century.
( o ) Most facts familiar with the most popular ancient historical records, such as the Histories of Herodotus, Xenophon’s Retreat, Strabo’s Geographica, the works of Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Cassius, Appian, Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus.
The works of famous European travelers such as Rubruck and Marco Polo, which have a large-scale coverage of the Godly Hayastan-Armenia country and its indigenous Armenian people. Many facts also can be found in Georgian, Persian, Arabic and Greek historians as of the 6th century BCE when the Tatar/Turk Azeris of Central Asia.
If Azerbaijanis do not trust the mentioned authors, they could at least have read the Ottoman writers of 16-19 centuries such as Mustafa Naima, Rashid, Ismail Asim Efendi, Suleiman Izghi, Katib Chelebi, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, Evliya Çelebi.
Some of whom not only have provided vast information about the Armenian world, but traveling to Armenia-Ermenistan, contacted with its Armenian-Christian residents.
Of course, they did not write anything about Azerbaijan, but it’s not their fault that they did not encounter a country named Azerbaijan in its current territory until 1918”
Brave woman, Thank you.
Well done Mayor, you have done your city and your country very proud. You too have been exceptional and strong. Well done. Threats and intimidation is the normality with the azeries and turks. They are blind to every fact but they also have nothing in their brain to understand facts and integrity. They have dictators ruling. The SAD fact is the population is too scared to make a difference.