Your Namak for Tuesday, December 20
Special report on Azerbaijan's blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Hi there, here’s your weekly briefing of Armenian news in English, curated, reported and fact-checked by journalists Astrig Agopian and Maral Tavitian.
Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh enters second week
Azerbaijan’s blockade of the only road linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia and the rest of the world has extended into a second week. Since December 12, self-proclaimed Azerbaijani “eco-activists” have been preventing the free movement of people and goods through the Lachin corridor. Isolated, 120,000 Armenians living in the region fear a humanitarian catastrophe. Namak interviewed several residents over the phone.
“It is quiet. There are not many cars in the street except for the emergency services. But there are solidarity efforts, people are kinder to each other, we support each other. It’s only us,” said Azat Adamyan, a war veteran and owner of the only pub in Nagorno-Karabakh, whom Namak profiled earlier this year.
Since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, air traffic has been completely interrupted. The Lachin corridor is a vital artery through which people, food supplies and medicines flow. While Azerbaijan has regularly violated the terms of the November 2020 ceasefire agreement, the scale of the ongoing blockade is unprecedented. The Baku authorities first cut the gas supply to Nagorno-Karabakh in December 2021, and did so again for a few days last week.
“We expect anything, even another war. I don’t know what to do to make it stop. Even big countries are not safe from wars, no one is safe.”
A wave of panic and anger swept through Nagorno-Karabakh when images began to circulate on social networks and in Azerbaijani media, showing “eco-activists” arriving en masse by buses from Baku. In videos posted online, some appear to be making the sign of the Grey Wolves, a far-right Turkish nationalist movement, openly anti-Armenian and anti-Kurdish. The demonstrators blocked the road and stood in front of the Russian peacekeepers, deployed along the Lachin corridor since the end of the war. They claimed to be protesting against the “illegal exploitation of mines” by the Armenians.
A video showing one of those protesters wearing a fur coat and shaking a dead white pigeon went viral on social media. Despite the anger, worry or sadness Armenians might feel, they retained their famous sense of humor. The strangled pigeon now has a Twitter account.
We asked 17-year-old high school student and aspiring photographer Ani Balayan to capture a few pictures for us and share her impressions. “There are huge queues everywhere, at bakeries, pharmacies, banks, stores... People are filling gas bottles. In those queues, some people are panicking, others making jokes,” she said. “We expect anything, even another war. I don’t know what to do to make it stop. Even big countries are not safe from wars, no one is safe.”
Most ATM machines are not working anymore, but some do and it is still possible to cash out money directly at the bank.
“Our patient Norayr, a 40-year-old man, suffered from a chronic kidney disease. He was supposed to be transferred to Yerevan as he had complications in the lungs, pulmonary embolism, and needed a special catheter ‘Longlife,’ that they only could put in Yerevan. Unfortunately we were not able to save his life.”
The blockade has taken a harsh toll on medical providers and patients in need of care. “We expect everything from now on. It’s not a total surprise. But we were hoping that the Russian ‘peacekeepers’ would react,” said 41-year-old pediatric surgeon Mary Grigoryan. “While people are doing their Christmas shopping, what we have to do is think about what will happen to the kids at the hospital if one of them gets worse and cannot be transported by the road or by air.”
“Of course I am scared. But if they think we will leave because of fear, they are wrong. I am not leaving my land. But I also just want to avoid new deaths,” Mary concluded.
Like her, 25-year-old doctor Svetlana Haroutounian is worried. “I have patients who suffer from heavy diabetes and require chronic treatments, stuck in villages, without access to care,” she said. “Some cancer patients who have to travel back and forth to Armenia to receive their treatment are stuck. One day’s delay can be fatal. We’re already at more than a week... I’m extremely worried.”
Doctor Artash Sayiyan, who works at the intensive care unit of the Republican Medical Center in Stepanakert confirmed that one patient died during the blockade. “Our patient Norayr, a 40-year-old man, suffered from a chronic kidney disease. He was supposed to be transferred to Yerevan as he had complications in the lungs, pulmonary embolism, and needed a special catheter ‘Longlife,’ that they only could put in Yerevan,” the doctor explained. “Unfortunately we were not able to save his life.”
“There is a 4-month-old baby who cannot be transferred to Yerevan so my colleagues have started treating the baby here, by doing online meetings with our colleagues in the capital city. The state of the child makes it too dangerous to move him right now, but we need the road to be opened to be able to send him there for treatment after,” Artash said.
A video of the Azerbaijani protestors making way for an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) vehicle to cross through the Lachin corridor circulated widely on social media. Artash confirmed that with the mediation of the ICRC, one patient in critical condition was transferred to Yerevan. “We had a 62-year-old man who has heart disease and needed to have open-heart surgery, very urgently, which we cannot do in Artsakh. He was sent there, to save his life,” Artash said.
“You cannot abandon 120,000 people like this… When will the world wake up? I would like the international community to recognize that there is an aggressor and a victim. We are being attacked. Armenians also deserve to live on their lands.”
However, that has been the only exception and the blockade continues. The scarcity of medicine and medical supplies is already felt in the region. “As a doctor, but also as an Artsakhsi, right now, I think the most important thing is to organize the transfer of all patients who need to be sent to Yerevan or somewhere else, by helicopters or planes,” Artash said. “Medical supplies and medicine should also be sent by an air road. That’s the biggest priority right now in this situation.”
“Azerbaijan is not respecting the ceasefire of November 2020. They closed the road for the second time. They do not have the right to do that. That’s actually an act of aggression, on people, on Armenians more globally,” the doctor concluded. According to the doctors, currently 10 adult patients and a dozen children are in intensive care.
Schools closed after the gas was cut for a few days. But most of the professors, like English teacher Gayane Lalabekyan, will keep on teaching anyway. “I lost my father in the first war in 1990. I think our children deserve better than a life of conflict. I teach 17-year-old boys, who in a few months will be doing their military service. And they are ready to go. But I hope that through diplomatic means, we will avoid a siege and a new war,” the teacher said, overcome with emotion. “You cannot abandon 120,000 people like this… When will the world wake up? I would like the international community to recognize that there is an aggressor and a victim. We are being attacked. Armenians also deserve to live on their lands.”
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry denied cutting off the gas and ordering the road to be blocked. President of Nagorno-Karabakh Arayik Harutyunyan said on December 16 that the people of the region had decided to “endure” in order to “neutralize attempts to impose concessions on Armenia.”
Nagorno-Karabakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan has advocated for the usage of Stepanakert Airport to airlift essential goods to the region. In an interview with CivilNet, he described the blockade as a humanitarian crisis, saying that the situation once again shows the world that it is “impossible for us to live under Azerbaijan’s supervision.”
“Yes, our people are all suffering because we have a sub-limitation of the benzine, the gasoline, the medical supplies, the food,” Vardanyan said. “But at the same time, we are in a very strong mood. We are not in any panic or any type of depression. We all understand this is a fight, and we are ready for a fight.”
In Armenia, thousands of people have filled the streets of the capital, seeking to call attention to the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh. Protestors and public officials are holding a sit-in outside the United Nations building in Yerevan, demanding that the international body condemn Azerbaijan’s actions and intervene to open the road. The Human Rights Defenders of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh published a joint report detailing the humanitarian consequences of a prolonged blockade, with some fearing that the standoff could continue for many weeks.
Thank you for reading this special report from Namak. We will continue to monitor the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and provide our readers with updates from the ground.
That’s it for today, see you next week!
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