The UN is wrong to claim that genocide is being committed against the 50,000 Armenian population of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. And it is even more wrong to deny that the genocide is being committed against 45 million Ukrainians. Mykhailo Podolyak, senior advisor to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accused the UN of acting as a lobbyist for Russian interests.
“The Armenians’ use of the term ‘genocide’ is taken directly from the Kremlin’s toolkit of propaganda and disinformation”
The Armenians’ use of the term “genocide” is taken directly from the Kremlin’s toolkit of propaganda and disinformation. The Russians based their invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2022 on fake news stories claiming that Georgians and Ukrainians were carrying out genocide against South Ossetia and Donbass, respectively. The Armenians are using the same Kremlin disinformation rhetoric to falsely claim that Azerbaijan is committing genocide in Karabakh.
Ironically, Armenia misuses the term “genocide”, because Armenian armed forces committed numerous war crimes and human rights violations during the First Karabakh War. These war crimes are not subject to investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) because they occurred prior to its establishment in 2002. Armenian troops ethnically cleansed between 750,000 and 1 million Azerbaijanis in Armenia and in the 20% of Azerbaijani territory they occupied for nearly three decades. 4,000 Azerbaijani soldiers and civilians went missing and were presumably killed during the First Karabakh War. Armenian occupying forces planted hundreds of thousands of landmines, destroyed numerous cultural, historical and religious buildings and desecrated cemeteries. Azerbaijan and Ukraine are the most heavily landmine-contaminated countries in the world.
The small Armenian minority in Karabakh is under pressure because it refuses to recognize the Karabakh region as sovereign territory of Azerbaijan. The 50,000 Armenians in Karabakh are holding 3 million Armenians and 10 million Azerbaijanis hostage, preventing Yerevan from agreeing to sign a peace treaty with Baku.
The Karabakh Armenians have refused to honor the ceasefire agreement signed at the end of the Second Karabakh War in November 2020. The ceasefire agreement clearly stated that Armenian troops, both regular and paramilitary, were to withdraw from Azerbaijan concurrently with the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh. This never happened, and Yerevan continued to illegally send military equipment and more military personnel with the tacit support of the Russian peacekeeping forces in Karabakh.
Nikol Pashinyan has been Prime Minister of Armenia for five years and is therefore directly responsible for Armenia’s failure to implement the ceasefire agreement by illegally maintaining paramilitary forces in Karabakh. By illegally supplying paramilitary forces in Karabakh, Pashinyan demonstrates a lack of commitment to the peace treaty.
“None of the articles defining genocide in international law apply to the policies being implemented against the Karabakh Armenians”
None of the articles defining genocide in international law apply to the policies being implemented against the Karabakh Armenians. Nevertheless, Luis Moreno Ocampo, former chief prosecutor of the ICC, wrote a report at the request of the leader of the Karabakh Armenians, claiming to have “a reasonable basis to believe that a genocide is being committed against Armenians living in Karabakh”.
“There are no crematories, and there are no machete attacks. Starvation is the invisible genocide weapon. Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks”, he said.
The false claim that Azerbaijan has caused starvation is ironic, as Armenia never recognized the 1933 Holodomor in Ukraine as genocide, unlike 34 other countries around the world. The Holodomor was a famine, instigated by the Stalinist regime, that killed more than 4 million Ukrainians.
A counter-report by British expert Rodney Dixon called Ocampo’s claim of a famine caused by Azerbaijan “fundamentally flawed” and one that misrepresents the ICC proceedings.
“There is no evidence to substantiate a defining element of genocide, which has a high threshold as a matter of international law – the specific intent to physically destroy the group in whole or in part. The references in the Opinion do not address this cornerstone requirement. It is reckless for an expert to make accusations of genocide without any proof”, Dixon stresses.
Ocampo’s opinion is “patently selective in the ‘facts’ to which it refers. It does not, for example, address Azerbaijan’s offer of an alternative route (the ‘Aghdam-Khankendi route’) to supply the ethnic Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh.” Furthermore, “relevant factual circumstances that plainly undermine the Opinion’s conclusions are conveniently glossed over and not mentioned. The Opinion thus falls far short of being a balanced and comprehensive expert report.”
The five acts that define genocide under international law are: killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing destructive living conditions, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. None of these five definitions of genocide are being perpetrated by Azerbaijan against the Armenians in Karabakh, but all five are being perpetrated by Russia against the Ukrainians.
Reports by the Washington-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights say that Russia’s genocidal plan “to destroy the Ukrainian national group in part may be demonstrated by the incitement to genocide driving the current invasion or by the striking patterns or methods of atrocities suggesting systematic State and military policy.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights. The ICC has never investigated or considered bringing charges against any Azerbaijani leaders.
Russian acts of genocide against Ukraine included mass killings, deliberate attacks on shelters, evacuation routes and humanitarian corridors, indiscriminate bombing of residential areas, blockades of populated areas by the military and deliberate and systematic imposing of life-threatening conditions, destruction of vital infrastructure, attacks on medical facilities, destruction and seizure of basic necessities, humanitarian aid and grain, rape and sexual violence against children, women and men, as well as forced displacement of Ukrainians.
The first report by the two prominent think tanks describes “state-orchestrated incitement to genocide by Russia”, including “denial of the existence of Ukrainians by senior Russian officials and the state in the media.” The report argues that “denial of the existence of protected groups is a specific indicator of genocide.”
“3.5 million Ukrainians were deported to Russia after being processed through filtration camps and entering Russian ‘adaptation centers’ where they are subjected to Russification and cultural assimilation”
The Washington Institute for the Study of War wrote: “Putin is likely setting conditions for the coerced cultural assimilation of displaced Ukrainians in Russia to erase their Ukrainian cultural identity.” 3.5 million Ukrainians were deported to Russia after being processed through filtration camps and entering Russian “adaptation centers” where they are subjected to Russification and cultural assimilation.
Unlike Russia, who denies the existence of Ukrainians, Azerbaijan has never denied the existence of the Armenian nation. Azerbaijani leaders and media have never used Russian-style genocidal discourse against Ukrainians to deny the existence of Armenians.
“Russian media and political discourse openly declare their goal of genocide of Ukrainians, while the actions of the Russian military implement this genocidal goal”
Claims that Azerbaijan is committing genocide against Armenians are patently false. Baku simply insisted that the Armenian minority in Karabakh recognize Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and comply with the provisions of the 2020 ceasefire agreement. By contrast, Russian media and political discourse openly declare their goal of genocide of Ukrainians, while the actions of the Russian military implement this genocidal goal.
The UN is wrong to claim that there is genocide being committed against Armenians in Karabakh, and even more wrong to deny that there is genocide being committed against Ukrainians. This approach discredits the UN as a professional and respected international organization.
Taras Kuzio
Translated from Gazeta.ua
