System of a Down frontman, musician Serj Tankian has called on the international community, particularly the European Union and United States, to display political will and initiate the deployment of an international peacekeeping force that would ensure the safe return of the forcibly displaced Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Tankian released a video message on the first anniversary of the 2023 Azeri attack in Nagorno-Karabakh which led to the ethnic cleansing of the entire indigenous Armenian population.
“A year ago, on this day ethnic cleansing occurred in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Tankian said, “about 120,000 Armenians were ethnically cleansed out of their indigenous lands of 2000 years by the oil dictatorship of Azerbaijan…This is after nine months of intentionally starving and blockading these people.”
He said that the displacement was a “modern genocide,” citing a report by the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, describing it as such.
Tankian said Azerbaijan “espouses a radical form of racism” against Armenians, which is why the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians cannot return to their homes without an international peacekeeping force.
The return can “only be done with international peacekeeping forces, monitoring forces. There needs to be political will to get this done, from the European Union to the United States to many other countries around the world.”
Tankian said Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh must be able to return home in peace and reclaim their lands.
