Friendly reminder that “Armenia is allied with Russia” was one of the main justifications for the 1915 genocide and the destruction of Armenian life in the Ottoman empire
We need to be objective about our position when it comes to the clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan. For too long 🇦🇲 has been a close ally of Russia (with all predictable consequances) whilst 🇦🇿 has continued to be aways a loyal and strategic friend to Poland and the West.
Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence on September 2, 1991. Azerbaijan declared its independence on October 18, 1991.
An independent Azerbaijan has never held a valid international legal claim, nor ever exercised state authority over the Armenian population of Artsakh
Three dictators divide up land that isn’t theirs after the world, including democracies and int’l orgs watched ethnic cleansing and did nothing. A fragile new democracy achieved with massive efforts is undermined. This is not a win for anyone but those dictators. Congratulations.
Have to say it. When I post info about clear, obvious, irrefutable human rights violations, 99% of the people engaging or liking it are Armenian. It's like we don't matter to the rest of you. But if it's some sanitized, vague "anti-war" thing, you're all over it
Just a reminder that these videos of Armenian POW executions are being *voluntarily* shared by Azerbaijani soldiers
Ursula Von Der Leyen’s “trustworthy partners”
I finally had the wherewithal to process the news from the other day that one of my former students was killed. I have no words, really. He was quiet and kind. Each loss is extremely heavy but when they're this young, it's a thousand heartbreaks
After witnessing the beheading of an Armenian POW yday, Armenians are now forced to read defenses of Safarov (another Azerbaijani who beheaded an Armenian) today because an idiot journalist decided to call us nationalists for complaining about all the fucking beheading
Phosphorus is water soluble. That means when it lands, it stays. It gets into ground water. It affects plant and animal life for a very long time.
As someone said here: people who love the land wouldn’t do this
Experts saying this offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh wasn’t expected: A 9-mo blockade, military park dehumanizing Armenians, creation of war logo, stamp depicting the extermination of Armenians, & cookie-cutter empty words of the EU and US, you didn't think this was expected?
Having done years of research on protest movements in southern Russia and the North Caucasus, I have to say the protest messaging, framing, and even the graphics coming out of Dagestan are remarkable and represent a significant political and social shift in the region
"The invader doesn't become a martyr"
Makhachkala protest after Friday prayer
(This is also a reference to a recent comment by Dagestan's deputy mufti)
This post is getting the condemnation it deserves but if there's anything I want ppl to take away from it it's that Armenophobia is so normalized in Azerbaijan that she has no idea how bad this looks. She's trying to advance Azerbaijani interests to a foreign audience with *this*
#French
Senate approved draft resolution envisaging sanctions against
#Azerbaijan
Senate's requests from Azerbaijan:
◾️Recognize the independence of the so-called
#Karabakh
republic
◾️Azerbaijan army should withdraw from Lachin corridor
◾️Free all
#Armenian
military prisoners
Everything I could say about Azerbaijan's attacks on Armenia proper I said back in 2020. This was never about territorial integrity, but about the total destruction of Armenia.
I don’t know how to put into words the visceral blow of coming across an image like this. How to convey what it’s like to be dehumanized in such a violent & public way. How those who are supposed to condemn and stop this genocidal glorification of Armenian death have done nothing
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev today, at a newly opened exhibition displaying the helmets of Armenian soldiers killed in last year's Second Karabakh War
What's more distressing is the lack of information about the thousands of Armenians who are currently missing, isolated, and stranded, many of them children. Their whereabouts are unknown and their safety is not being guaranteed by ANY entity.
The Azeris are requiring Artsakh hand over specific individuals before they allow a humanitarian corridor for Armenians to escape. This a precondition of genocide.
I wrote this in a chain-smoking fueled couple of hours because when headlines tell the world that “clashes erupted” and intl actors call on “both sides” to show restraint, Armenians somehow become equal instigators in the bombing of their own land
I, along with 13 others, wrote a protest letter to
@Carnegie_Europe
about Tom de Waal's recent piece ("badge of honor") which contained falsehoods & factual distortions even after corrections. We were met with condescension & dismissal. This is the story:
Vagif Khachatryan, 68 y.o., was arrested by Azerbaijani authorities while being transferred from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia under the supervision of the ICRC. He was travelling to receive heart surgery, during Azerbaijan's blockade.
He's being tried right now
An illegal judicial process has commenced in Azerbaijan. Vagif Khachatryan is being tried on completely fabricated charges, after being abducted by Azerbaijani authorities in the summer at a criminal checkpoint in Lachin.
PS: my point is to show that none of the 'side with' options will bring peace, nor will application of international law (for many complex reasons). They would all escalate conflict, the risk for atrocities would shoot up, never mind the risk of a wider conflict (Turkey etc).
I’d love for the international actors who’ve paved the way for this assault to explain to us what they think “peace” in the region will look like after this is over
The exhausted Armenians streaming into Armenia with few possessions, many unsure of where to go, means Azerbaijan gave them no choice but to leave. Azerbaijan bombed these people into submission after starving them for 9 months
Azerbaijan is not forcing anyone to leave Karabakh, says Hikmet Hajiyev, Foreign Policy Adviser to the President of Azerbaijan. Speaking to DW, he insisted that it was the "personal and individual decision" of residents..
Now that Artsakh’s indigenous Armenians have been forced out by war and crippling blockade, Azerbaijan allows the UN - which could have pushed to enter before this catastrophe, - inside to assess humanitarian needs. But now, there’s no one left.
A UN monitoring mission has reportedly arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh "to familiarize themselves with the situation on the ground and to determine the humanitarian needs of the residents," reports Azerbaijan's APA news agency.
UN teams have not visited the region for ~30 years.
As I predicted in November, Azerbaijan is moving now to polish out medieval Armenian inscriptions on captured churches. Earlier today, Dr. Ilham Aliyev (yup, the man who wiped out 28,000 medieval monuments in Nakhichevan has a PhD in history!), proclaimed the inscriptions “fake”
A remarkable thing is happening on Armenian Facebook now. Women are sharing personal accounts of sexual harassment & violence, sending them to a woman named Lucy Kocharyan who is reposting them anonymously on Facebook. Check the hashtag #բռնության_ձայնը
I recently visited Yerablur, Armenia’s military cemetery, with friends, one of whom was visiting from Germany. Sitting by my fallen student’s grave, this friend took a couple photos of the (quite moving) gravestone. Suddenly a groundskeeper approached us asking if we’re Armenian
Father of one of the victims of
#Azerbaijan
's recent attack on
#Armenia
posted ab. the date of his son's public commemoration & Azerbaijani users reacted with ha-ha
Why would anyone be so cruel? Imagine the father's mental state. How are we going to deal with all this hate?
But that's not the point. Justifications change depending on narrative expediency. The point is that Armenians breathing and existing in their homeland is a threat to both Turkey and Azerbaijan and they will find a reason to eliminate that threat
Disappointing to see ppl I respect sharing this thread as if it's insightful or sincere. It is neither. It in fact muddies waters & simplifies what Genocide constituted, implies it was moment in history & not an ideology and persistent power structure with *continuing iterations*
1 Pres. Biden may recognize the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as the Armenian Genocide
@john_Hudson
,
@JakesNYT
report. It’s the right thing to do. It will start to bring solace and closure to Armenians whose grandparents died in 1915-16.
“Both sides” may have reported clashes, but one side lies about starting wars and it happens to be the same side that constantly instigates clashes, sends drones, fires into civilian settlements, and makes incursions into sovereign Armenian territory. Your journalism is shit
We’re being dismissed as nationalists for calling out this obvious, irrefutable bias of the very ppl whose job it is to be unbiased and address this. Ppl who can actually make a difference. This dynamic is violent af
I hope by this point folks realize this is why Artsakh Armenians fought for self-determination in the first place. Survival. It was the same in 1988. If this is not reflected in your think pieces on this ~provocative~ news, it's worthless.
Self-determination is a human right.
This is a good time to point out our experts, never missing an opportunity to lecture Armenians on living in peace with genocidal neighbors, are absolutely silent on this. It’s acceptable for them that Azerbaijan is attempting to escalate the conflict. Some things are that simple
Breathtakingly tone-deaf and cruel framing in this article, even for Tom de Waal. Words he uses to describe Armenians: "angry", "toxic". Clear implication here is that it's Armenians' fault for having been nearly wiped off the earth and wanting that recognised
In 1944 Raphael Lemkin coined the word genocide in a book published by the
@CarnegieEndow
Last weekend Pres Biden formally recognized the Armenian Genocide as such. Here is my column for Carnegie on the meaning of the US recognition
All the other cool Armenian and Parajanov references aside, the fact that Lady Gaga lifted up Armenian designer Karina Akopyan really moved me. Like she really did this for us. The whole thing is a gorgeous homage
Seeing videos of Russia mobilize its minorities - having cracked down on the same people’s native languages while advocating for the rights of the Russian language abroad - to fight its imperial war in Ukraine has been nothing short of devastating
SINCE AN HOUR AGO WE HAVE NO GAS IN ARTSAKH. AGAIN!
AS SOON AS THE
@UN
DELEGATION LEFT OCCUPIED SHUSHI, AZERBAIJAN CUT OUR ACCESS TO GAS.
FREEZING US TO DEATH CONTINUES.
Let's talk about Azerbaijani propaganda’s framing of Armenians in Artsakh as “looters” & “vandals”, based on deliberate ignoring and obfuscation of Artsakh’s destroyed infrastructure, its denied status & the poverty of its regions
@DRovera
@amnesty
What the...
So you screen shot the thing to avoid addressing it directly? You want to subject more people to the trauma of seeing it while skirting actually dealing with it? While STILL managing to bothsides this?
Beyond despicable.
Western nations should own up to the futility of appeasing a dictatorship and accept that allowing Azerbaijan to escape unchastised will encourage more crimes by bad-faith actors elsewhere. My piece for
@Newsweek
It’s an open secret that Azerbaijan has its eyes on much more than NK. Here Az politician Mammadov openly discusses Armenia’s southern province of Siunik (Zangezur) as being theirs.
When we say this isn’t a war over territory but a struggle for existence, try listening to us
The main untold story in the Karabakh conflict is the story of Zangezur Azerbaijanis who 1) have been much greater in number than Armenians of NK, 2) had no autonomy, & 3) were totally cleansed in the first years of THIS VERY CONFLICT. Zangezur is part of the historical Karabakh.
To ppl I know IRL: the people executed today - they could have been me. Or your other Armenian friend. This is not hyperbole. Those men are not in any way different bc they live in a war zone. We are all the target right now. Get that through your fucking heads.
Azerbaijan continues to hold ~200 Armenian POWs six months after the ceasefire. Azerbaijan tortured & executed 19 of those POWs the majority of whom were civilians and four were women. Azerbaijani soldiers are currently 3.5 km into Armenia proper. It's time to speak up & condemn
The link between 1915 and the current conflict goes beyond the symbolic: in 2020, Turkish soldiers, embedded with the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, were killing Armenians again. But that's not all.
Very disappointing that
@nybooks
, whom we rely on for critical insight on world affairs, would publish this.
Legitimate points about recent Azerbaijani aggression and threats nullified by being put in an entirely Armenian nationalist/genocide framework
Twitter is a flurry of armchair analysts discussing the conflict from perspective of great powers, opining abt “what this means for the region” & reposting their old articles that have tangential relevance to this. Our lives & livelihoods are never centered. I truly hate it here
If you care about human rights, know that the war is not limited to the war zone. Armenians are under attack by the same entities everywhere. 3 hate crimes in San Francisco in 2 mos, attacks on Boston Armenian restaurant, this. This isn’t just about land. It’s global intimidation
The Karabakh conflict's foremost expert has yet to acknowledge the simple fact that Azerbaijan launched the war. He not only refuses to provide actual analysis and nuance, he is determined to artificially flatten, oversimplify, and equalize what happened
It’s one year since the outbreak of the tragic 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani 44-Day War. A day to recall the 8,000 people who died, mainly young men born after the 1994 ceasefire. The dead included around 170 civilians on both sides. A few hundred are still officially missing.
Despite an oil production boom and years of double-digit economic growth, Azerbaijan's people suffer from poverty and one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The deployment of state-level armenophobia as a tool for Aliyev's regime survival couldn't be clearer as here
Regional observers and analysts seemingly suddenly intrigued with Artsakh/Karabakh Armenians now with the prospect of them receiving Russian passports but have said fuck all about the atrocities and war crimes. What a magical world they must live in
(1/3)This person is blind. He was blinded as a child from the explosion of a leftover bomb from the first Artsakh war. Nonetheless, he graduated diplomatic schools in Yerevan, London and USA Tufts. He got married, had a child.
#DontBeBlind
Disgusted but unsurprised at
@hrw
's silence on the military assault in Karabakh and the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe, with thousands missing in a region cut off from essential supplies. This is day 3.
I can assure Tom no one in Armenia is focused on transport routes more than they are on the fact that Azerbaijan has violated the ceasefire agreement multiple times, moved its positions forward into Armenia proper, taken captives, and murdered civilians going about their lives
As Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian leaders meet in Sochi today, a reminder of a key issue that still awaits agreement a year after the 2020 war, unblocking of transport routes, esp. to Azerbaijan's exclave of Nakhchivan. My paper on these issues from earlier in the month.
This is the monastery of St. Bartholemew in my grandmother’s village of Aghbak, which also served Armenian communities in Iran and Iraq. It was a pilgrimage site until the 1915 Genocide and was later blown up by the Turkish military. I was lucky enough to see it last month
St. Bartholomeus Kilisesi;
Van’ın Başkale İlçesi’ne bağlı Albayrak Köyü’nde bulunan bu kilise, Büyük Zap Vadisi’ne bakan bir tepe üzerine Ermeni krallığı tarafından kurulmuş. Hz. İsanın havarisi; Saint Bartholomeus’un mezarı üzerine 2. yüzyıl başlarında inşa edildiği
Look how
#Azerbaijan
armed forces burnt Aknaghbyur village in
#Artsakh
/
#Karabakh
.
It's their style of war as there are many proofs that wherever they enter, immediately burn the houses.
Az continues heavy
#WarCrimes
, intl community continues staying blind/incapable.
#DontBeBlind
The family with 6 children moved to
#Armenia
🇦🇲 from Nagorno Karabakh as a result of war. They were supported within the “Act Now” Emergency Assistance to Spontaneous Arrivals from Nagorno Karabakh project funded by
#EU
🇪🇺 and implemented by
@WVArmenia
👉
I can’t stress enough the necessity of a truth commission in Armenia to establish facts around the conduct of the war. Without that, we only have conjecture, rumor, and conspiracy theories which will only be used to exploit a traumatized and grieving public.
I think many of us feel helpless about what’s happened in Artsakh, facing down overwhelming force and brutality with complete indifference around us. But here is something tangible we can do - help a resettled family replace their windows ahead of winter
I’m sorry but there is no way Azerbaijan can ever come to control Artsakh. Remedial secession and holding Baku and Ankara accountable for this is the only way to stop further ethnic cleansing, violence, displacement and human misery
The news that came out today - this is why Armenians fight. No cherry picked UN resolution in the world can justify that.
People’s rights over states’ rights.
“Uhm …”
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, stood stunned. As President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Charles Michel, president of the European Council, sat in their gilded seats for a photo op, there was no chair for her.
In 2021 you condescendingly dismissed as overblown Armenian concerns that Azerbaijan would eventually undertake aggression against the Republic of Armenia. No apology, no self reflection.
Stop opining on this.
"The door which never opened for me finally opened. I don't know how I left, but when I did, I looked back and said, dear God, to whoever is imprisoned here after me, don't let them be tortured like I was. Let them leave fast."
- Maral Najarian
“The UN had not advocated for greater humanitarian efforts for Nagorno-Karabakh because Azerbaijan, which has been reluctant to grant access to the region since the end of its 44-day war there in 2020, has lobbied within the UN to deter int’l pressure.”
It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster, but it’s real.
@NASA
scientists will soon launch a mission to change the course of a distant asteroid in a test of technology that could one day save planet Earth from disaster.
@AsteroidWatch
@JHUAP
We haven’t even come close to addressing how the modern Turkish bourgeoisie continues to enrich itself from the theft of Armenian property and land in our discussions around the Armenian Genocide
"The entire Armenian dispossession produced the homogeneous Turkish city where I grew up. The fortunes of wealthy families today were built by robbing the Armenians and often murdering their neighbors."
“The war should be seen in the historical context of wider policies of Azerbaijan & Turkey regarding Armenians. Throughout history, these two nations have failed to recognize the Armenian right to self-determination & often resorted to murderous violence”
Unimaginable pain for the families of Armenian POWs (hostages at this point) held this long after the cessation of fighting. Absolutely indescribable cruelty and indignity. And morally totally indefensible
UPDATE: The plane returning the Armenian POWs from Baku landed empty. Russian peacekeeping forces general Muradov arrived in Yerevan. Parents gathered at the airport waiting for their sons' return are now on their way to Arm MoD & gov buildings to protest.
Here's what I think: I think deep down you're afraid of Azeroturkish harassment online. You've seen it happen to us. You know what it involves. But I also think you still don't understand the stakes.
There’s a difference between grassroots protests and protests facilitated by elites. One is bottom up and cannot but reflect popular will, the other is top down and reflects the interests of those elites
Tom de Waal, who repeated Baku propaganda for years that Aliyev was ready for negotiations, ignored the increasingly genocidal, maximalist rhetoric from Baku, and dismissed Armenian concerns as tribal, is now concerned
A lot going on in the world but keep watching the deteriorating
#Armenia
-
#Azerbaijan
situation if you can. Lachin corridor to
#Karabakh
now blocked by Azerbaijanis for 100 days. Latest aggressive speech by Pres Aliyev: "Armenia must accept our conditions"