In Karabakh, Armenians are starving: “Azerbaijan responsible for the genocide”

The genocide of the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh has begun.
“On Tuesday, August 15, a man residing in Stepanakert, the capital, died of malnutrition.” This was stated by Gegham Stepanyan, Guarantor of civil rights of the small Caucasian Republic, a handkerchief trapped in Azerbaijan and in a war that lasted over thirty years. Since last December 12, the Azeris have closed the Lachin Corridor, the only access to the Armenian enclave to force it to capitulate and condemn it to definitive occupation. And for over eight months, Karabakh has no longer received supplies of food, medicine and basic necessities. Azerbaijan has also cut off supplies of gas, drinking water and electricity: a very serious humanitarian crisis has begun for the 120,000 inhabitants of Karabakh, the country is on its last legs.
“The catastrophic consequences of the blockade are dramatically evident in the health sector, because it is affecting the most vulnerable groups of the population: children, pregnant women, patients with chronic diseases, people with disabilities and the elderly”, confirms the Ombusman. According to estimates by the Armenian Foreign Ministry, “in Karabakh there are 8,450 seriously ill people without adequate care, 2,000 pregnant women without assistance, 30,000 children and 20,000 elderly people at risk of malnutrition, 9,000 disabled people left to themselves”. People prevented by Azerbaijan from finding refuge in Armenia.
«The catastrophic food situation caused by the Azeris is creating episodes of malnutrition and in a few weeks we will be starving. Furthermore, the lack of medicines is paralyzing hospitals and thousands of people can no longer be treated,” explains Gegham Stepanyan. A dramatic situation which the regime of the Azeri president Ilham Aliyev does not seem to want to put an end to, on the contrary, because all the appeals of the international community have so far literally fallen on deaf ears. Including the one sent last July 6 by the International Court in The Hague to order Azerbaijan to break the siege: “Denying the right to free movement of people, vehicles and goods plausibly constitutes racial discrimination”. Ethnic persecution, therefore. The words of the president of Nagorno Karabak, Araik Arutyunyan, in his last letter to the European Council are also very harsh: “My country has been transformed into an immense concentration camp”. The report published on August 8 by the former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, leaves no way out either. “There are no crematoria or machete attacks. Hunger is an invisible weapon of genocide. In the absence of relevant and timely changes, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks,” the Argentine high magistrate denounced. The images of poor Karen Hovhannisyan, 43, her body consumed by hunger and by the Azeris to death, testify that the extermination of the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh has already begun, invisible only to eyes that do not want to see.