Nagorno-Karabakh: Armenian Refugees

Chris Law Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Elliott. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) for securing this debate, which is long overdue. It is over a year since we debated the closure of the Lachin corridor and the impact of Azerbaijan’s aggressive actions towards the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh.

In January 2023, the majority of those who spoke recognised the dire humanitarian situation emerging in the region. We understood the tactics being employed by Azerbaijan and we warned that without a sufficient response from the international community, there would be full-scale ethnic cleansing, which is exactly what has happened. As I mentioned at the time, the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, made his desired outcome of the blockade clear when he said:

“Whoever doesn’t want to become our citizens can leave, the road is open. They can go by the cars of the Russian peacekeepers, by buses, no one will impede them.”

What a welcome that is. He wanted to force the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to leave their ancestral homeland.

Nine months after that debate, we saw those words put into action after Azerbaijan violated the 2020 ceasefire agreement by launching a full-scale military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh on 19 September. More than 100,000 Armenians—almost all the region’s ethnic Armenian population—fled in fear of persecution, in addition to the 40,000 who had already fled in 2020. The Lachin corridor, which has been blockaded for so long, became the only escape route for those people fleeing on foot, by car or truck, by carriage or tractor—by any means necessary. They left behind their homes and belongings, their churches and cemeteries, and their businesses and schools. They were forcibly displaced from their land and became refugees.

A group of more than a dozen non-governmental organisations, including Genocide Watch, have issued a warning that all the conditions for ethnic cleansing are now in place. What assessment have the UK Government made of that claim, and will the Minister commit to supporting an independent fact-finding mission to establish what has occurred in Nagorno-Karabakh, and to support and promote justice for the victims in the coming months? Furthermore, what conversations is he having with Azerbaijani colleagues regarding the right of return for those who fled Nagorno-Karabakh, and what guarantees for the safety of those displaced would Azerbaijan be willing to provide, in line with the International Court of Justice order?

Armenia now faces an extensive refugee crisis. Within an estimated population of 3 million, one in 30 people in Armenia is now a refugee. Most of the refugee population arrived in Armenia suffering from the acute effects of the blockade, with medical workers reporting a high number of cases of malnourishment, dehydration and a lack of access to prescriptions. Armenia has been generous in providing resources to host refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, but the aid has been straining the state budget, and it is not clear how long the Armenian Government can sustain the payments. It is a huge burden for a country of some 3 million people, a quarter of whom already live below the official poverty line.

In October last year, the UNHCR estimated that the Armenian Government would need $97 million to cover refugees’ essential needs through the end of March. The Armenian Government have sought international aid, but the amounts received have been insufficient. France, the EU and the US have led the way in providing support. France has given €27.5 million in financial support, alongside the delivery of humanitarian aid containing 5 tonnes of medical equipment for the treatment of severely injured persons who have been forcibly displaced. The EU has given €17 million, while the US has provided $11.5 million to address healthcare and other emergency needs.

The UK, meanwhile, has offered only £1 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross to meet humanitarian needs. That is a welcome start, but it is not enough. More aid is needed to immediately tackle the ongoing refugee crisis caused by the mass displacement, so will the Minister commit today to providing more financial assistance?

Although aid is much needed, it addresses only the symptoms and not the cause of the crisis. Support and protection are required not just for Armenian refugees, but for Armenian human rights and, ultimately, Armenian sovereignty. Atrocities do not begin when the first family is expelled from their home, or when the first village is razed to the ground. Wars do not begin when the first shot or missile is fired, or when the first troops and tanks cross the border. More often than not, they begin with words. They begin with othering and dehumanising a group of people. They begin by rewriting history, as we heard from the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid). They begin by laying claim to other people’s territory.

Let us hear some of the words of the President of Azerbaijan in recent years. Early last decade, he tweeted:

“Armenia as a country is of no value. It is actually a colony, an outpost run from abroad, a territory artificially created on ancient Azerbaijani lands.”

In October 2020, during the war, he made a public address in Azerbaijan in which he said, regarding the progress of the war:

“We are driving them away like dogs!”

A couple of years ago, he encouraged the Azerbaijani media to refer to Armenian settlements by Azerbaijani names, and has encouraged the use of the term “western Azerbaijan” instead of Armenia. All of that is historically incorrect and is hate speech. Those words are being put into practice.

In the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan, all Armenian cultural heritage has been destroyed, most notably the cemetery of Julfa, where thousands of centuries-old monuments were destroyed to make way for a military shooting ground—shocking, is it not? From the Google Earth satellite’s view of the site, an Azerbaijani slogan has been carved on a hillside where the cemetery used to reside, saying, “Everything is for the homeland”. Will Armenian culture and heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh suffer the same fate? More than 4,000 Armenian historical and cultural monuments are under the threat of total destruction. Can the Minister assure me of the steps that the UK Government are taking to preserve that cultural heritage?

Shamefully, the UK Government have also been caught encouraging UK businesses to participate in Aliyev’s plans for Nagorno-Karabakh. One senior UK Government official encouraged business leaders to take advantage of the financial opportunities. He said that a

“huge western chunk of the country…needs to be rebuilt from the ground up”.

Therefore, why are the UK Government not willing to condemn Azerbaijan’s actions towards Armenia, but are instead willing to be complicit and participate in those actions? When the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court issued an expert opinion explaining that Azerbaijan’s impeding of food, medical supplies and other essentials in Nagorno-Karabakh represented

“the archetype of genocide through the imposition of conditions of life designed to bring about a group’s destruction”?,

and when the ICJ considered it “plausible” that the Lachin corridor blockade produced a real and imminent risk to the health and life of Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh, why did the UK not take provisions to prevent this?

The renewed conflict demonstrates the failure of years of diplomatic efforts to prevent the persecution of ethnic Armenians. The lack of any condemnation, sanctions for wrongdoing and action to ensure a sustainable peace will only be taken as the green light for further acts of aggression. Indeed, in Syunik province, illegal incursions have been made on Armenian sovereign territories, with the establishment of armed outposts blocking roads, denying access to fields, places of work and places of worship, and intimidating and threatening civilians.

Azerbaijan continues to make territorial demands on Armenia and has ambitions to create the Zangezur corridor connecting Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave and to Turkey, cutting off Armenia’s southern border with Iran. Any land grab from Azerbaijan is illegal under international law, and the UK has a duty to take a stand on that. Will the Minister make it crystal clear today that this is unacceptable? These are the next steps in creating what President Aliyev calls “western Azerbaijan”, and it is, quite simply, akin to the Putin playbook in Ukraine being repeated by Aliyev in Armenia. We cannot, and must not, embolden this behaviour.

Throughout the world, the rules-based system is under threat by the actions of leaders who believe they can act with impunity. The flouting of international law is becoming more commonplace, and it is getting closer and closer to home. Whether it is Russia, Israel or Azerbaijan, the UK cannot pick and choose when human rights protections and international law apply depending on who it is allies with. If the UK is to play a credible role in the world, it must be consistent, and in this instance, it must support the rights of Armenian refugees and the Armenian people.