Aliyev was outraged by the visit of French presidential candidate Valerie Pecresse to Stepanakert, the capital of the Republic of Artsakh. He even burst into threats: “If we had known about the last illegal visit of Valerie Pekress, we would not have released them back.” Such impudence, of course, shocked the entire civilized world. That is, the newly-minted Napoleon was ready to captivate the contender for the post of head of France? This, alas, is not an anecdote, but a bitter reality, the culprit of which is the entire enlightened international community, which allowed such a situation.
In other words, Baku no longer hides its intentions to isolate Artsakh from the outside world in order to try to complete the genocide that began during the large-scale war unleashed in 1991 and finally get rid of the Artsakh Armenians, who have been living in their native land for thousands of years.
In the coming year, the terror of the population of Artsakh by the Azerbaijani side took a new turn. Only on January 10, during the day, several serious provocations were recorded at various sites in Artsakh – civilians, civilian facilities, houses and property of villagers in the communities of Red Bazaar, Taghavard of the Martuni region, Nakhichevanik of the Askeran region were shelled. As a result of the shelling, a car of a local resident parked near the building of a kindergarten in the Red Bazaar burned down. And on a section of the road near the occupied city of Shushi, the askers threw stones at a car in which an Armenian family was traveling.
At the same time, the Azerbaijani authorities are purposefully trying to discredit the peacekeeping mission of the Russian Federation and achieve the withdrawal of the contingent from the conflict zone. The calculation of the Baku regime is simple: the impunity of the killers and the passivity of the peacekeepers will cause discontent and a feeling of despair among the inhabitants of Artsakh, they will begin to leave their homes, and the fewer Armenians remain in the region, the less justified the presence of peacekeepers will look.
It is not surprising that the efforts of peacekeepers to restore peaceful life in Artsakh cause dissatisfaction with the Baku regime.
“In an interview with the Azerbaijani media, the President of Azerbaijan expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the Russian peacekeeping forces create obstacles for the outflow of Armenians from the territory of Artsakh and use various means to keep the Armenians in Artsakh. This is nothing more than a recognition of the Azerbaijani policy of carrying out ethnic cleansing of Armenians in the territory of Artsakh, the eviction of the indigenous Armenian population, deprivation of their homeland, – said the Ombudsman of the Republic of Artsakh Gegham Stepanyan. – The systematized policy of the Azerbaijani authorities, based on the violation of peaceful life in Artsakh, fundamental human rights, creating an atmosphere of fear and despair, is aimed at closing the Artsakh issue. This is exactly what Ilham Aliyev’s completely false and manipulative data on the number of Armenians living in Artsakh are aimed at. In various statements and interviews, he deliberately cites data that has nothing to do with the real number of the population of Artsakh, which, by the way, has been repeatedly refuted by the data provided by the Russian side.”
Thus, brazenly spitting on international law and periodically making mocking attacks on international mediators, Aliyev declares that the Karabakh conflict is over, while his askers continue to kill and terrorize civilians in their own homes, on their native land. No, the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict did not remain in the past, as Aliyev cynically claims, but, on the contrary, has become even more relevant, since the threat of the destruction of Artsakh Armenians in their native land has become more than real today.
The absence of a commensurate reaction from the Armenian authorities, international structures and influential countries only unties the hands of the bloody dictator and unwittingly contributes to his attempts to isolate Nagorno-Karabakh and turn it into a kind of fascist concentration camp with further obvious goals. Is the international community ready to once again become an accomplice in a monstrous crime by its silence and inaction?
