Category: Selected Articles

A Russian military court sentenced Abdulmumin Gadzhiyev, a former editor and journalist, to 17 years in a maximum security prison colony, on charges that human rights organisations maintain are politically motivated. 

Gadzhiyev was found guilty of participating in the activities of a terrorist community, organising its financing, and participating in an extremist community, charges that the journalist denies. 

Gadzhiyev was arrested in 2019 while working as an editor and journalist for Chernovik, an independent Daghestani outlet. 

Gadzhiyev had edited the religion section of the newspaper, and was accused at the time of transferring funds to organisations ‘spreading […] Islamic extremism’. A year after his arrest, Gadzhiyev faced new charges of ‘organising the activity of an extremist organisation’.

[Read more: One year after his arrest Abdulmumin Gadzhiyev faces new charges]

According to Sapa Kavkaz, a Telegram channel reporting on the North Caucasus, approximately 30 people came to the court to support the journalist. It adds that the Russian Ombdusperson Tatyana Moskalkova and the Union of Journalists of Russia have expressed their support for Gadzhiyev. 

Memorial, a leading Russian human rights centre, has declared Hajiyev a political prisoner, with international human rights organisation Amnesty International also declaring him a prisoner of conscience. Reporters Without Borders and the International Committee to Protect Journalists have demanded Gadzhiyev’s release.

The court reportedly found Gadzhiyev guilty of collecting and sending a total of over $800,000 to terrorist organisations, together with charitable foundation head Abubakar Rizvanov and programmer Kemal Tambiyev. 

According to Chernovik, Gadzhiyev was detained in relation to ‘inconvenient questions’ that the outlet put to government officials and security forces.

During the investigation, a number of witnesses stated that they had not given testimonies attributed to them, with others stating that they had been threatened by the security forces. Some refused to answer the lawyers’ questions, citing memory and head problems.

According to Sapa Kavkaz, Gadzhiyev stated in court that while he did not hope for any significant changes, he planned to appeal the verdict. 

‘Based on our practice and the sentences we have seen, the maximum they will decrease a sentence by is a year. However, concerning cassation, there are enough examples where they sort out serious errors’, Gadzhiyev reportedly said. 

The prosecutor reportedly requested 19 years in a high-security prison colony for Gadzhiyev and other defendents, on the basis of Gadzhiyev, Rizvanov, and Kemalov’s participation in and financing of organisations banned in Russia, including the Islamic State, the Congress of the Peoples of Ichkeria and Daghestan, the Supreme Military Majlisul Shura of the United Mujahideen Forces of the Caucasus.

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Authorities in an isolated ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan on Tuesday allowed entry of a humanitarian aid shipment in a step toward easing a dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan that has blocked transport to the region since late last year.

The region, called Nagorno-Karabakh, has been under the control of ethnic Armenians since the 1994 end of a separatist war. That war had left much of the surrounding territory under Armenian control as well, but Azerbaijan regained that territory in a six-week-long war with Armenia in 2020; Nagorno-Karabakh itself remained outside Azerbaijani control.

17:35, 12 September 2023

WIESBADEN, Germany —

Approximately 85 U.S. Soldiers will train alongside approximately 175 Armenian soldiers during Eagle Partner, a peacekeeping training exercise in Armenia, from Sept. 11-20.

The U.S. Soldiers from the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and Kansas National Guard, and the Soldiers from the Armenian 12th Peacekeeping Brigade will conduct the training at Zar and Armavir Training Areas near Yerevan.

“Eagle Partner is a vital opportunity for our soldiers from our two nations to build new relationships at the tactical level and to increase interoperability for peacekeeping operations,” said Col. Martin O’Donnell, U.S. Army Europe and Africa. “It also builds upon the 20-year relationship that the Kansas National Guard has cultivated with Armenia.”

As part of the Department of Defense’s State Partnership Program, the Kansas National Guard has had a state partnership with Armenia since 2003.

The exercise is planned to prepare the Armenian 12th Peacekeeping Brigade for a NATO Operational Capabilities Concept (OCC) evaluation under the NATO Partnership for Peace program later this year.

For more information, contact U.S. Army Europe and Africa Public Affairs media@army.mil or visit https://www.dvidshub.net/feature/EaglePartner.

(Reuters) – Tensions are running high again between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been the cause of two wars between them in the past three decades.

Here is a look at the history of the conflict and the latest developments.

WHAT IS NAGORNO-KARABAKH?

Nagorno-Karabakh, known as Artsakh by Armenians, is a landlocked mountainous area in the Caucasus region. It is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but its inhabitants are predominantly ethnic Armenians, who number about 120,000. They have their own government which has enjoyed close links to Armenia’s but has not been officially recognised by Armenia or any other country.

Armenians, who are Christians, claim a long presence in the area, dating back to several centuries before Christ. Azerbaijan, whose inhabitants are mostly Muslim, also claims deep historical ties to the region, which over the centuries has come under the sway of Persians, Turks and Russians. Under the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh became an autonomous region within the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.

FIRST KARABAKH WAR

As the Soviet Union crumbled, what is known as the First Karabakh War (1988-1994) erupted between Armenians and their Azerbaijani neighbours. About 30,000 people were killed and more than a million people displaced, most of them Azeris driven from homes when the Armenian side ended up in control of Nagorno-Karabakh itself and swathes of seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan.

44-DAY WAR IN 2020

In 2020, after decades of intermittent skirmishes, Azerbaijan began a military operation which became the Second Karabakh War, swiftly breaking through Armenian defences. It won a resounding victory in the 44-day war, taking back the seven districts and about a third of Karabakh itself.

The use of drones bought from Turkey and Israel was cited by military analysts as one of the main reasons for Azerbaijan’s victory. At least 6,500 people were killed.

Russia, a treaty ally of Armenia but which also has good relations with Azerbaijan, stepped in to negotiate a ceasefire.

The deal provided for 1,960 Russian peacekeepers to deploy to Karabakh to guard the only road left linking the enclave with Armenia – the so-called Lachin corridor.

PEACE TALKS

Analysts say successive rounds of talks, mediated variously by the European Union, the United States and Russia, have brought the two sides closer to a permanent peace treaty than they have been for years, but a final settlement remains elusive. The most sensitive issue is the status of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians in Karabakh, whose rights and security Armenia says must be guaranteed. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said his country recognises the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, but Baku says it does not trust that assertion was made in good faith and accuses Armenia of “fuelling separatism”.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

In December 2022 Azeri civilians identifying themselves as environmental activists began blocking the Lachin corridor, and in April 2023 Azerbaijan established a new security checkpoint along it. These moves have cut off the flow of people and goods between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh except for urgent medical evacuations, creating what the United States and others have called a “rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation”. Azerbaijan says it acted to prevent the road being used to smuggle weapons.

In a possible breakthrough, ethnic Armenian authorities in Karabakh said on Saturday they had agreed to let in aid shipments from Baku-held territory for the first time in decades, in return for the reopening of the Lachin corridor. But uncertainty surrounds the implementation of the agreement.

Meanwhile Armenia and Azerbaijan have accused each other of building up troops near their shared border and around Karabakh in the past week, prompting fears among residents of both capitals that war could break out again. Russia has been heavily distracted by its war in Ukraine, raising doubts about its ability to maintain peace despite its assertion that it remains the security guarantor in the region.

(Reporting by Reuters)

WASHINGTON – This week, U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered remarks on the Senate floor on the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh, calling on the United States and the international community to respond and hold President Aliyev and his regime accountable for their actions in the region, which bear the hallmarks of genocide.

“Of course, to be an honest broker means we need to tell the truth about Azerbaijan’s atrocities,” Chairman Menendez said. “We need to call out those individuals perpetrating this campaign of ethnic cleansing. We need to target them—including President Aliyev—with sanctions. We need to be cutting off their access to the wealth and oil money they have stashed away at financial institutions around the world, to their yachts and mansions across Europe. The evidence is there and we must preserve it so that Aliyev can be held accountable for these atrocities.”

A copy of Chairman Menendez’s speech, as delivered, has been provided below.

“Mr. President, I rise to speak about a horrific set of events that are taking place in a part of the world that we could do something about.

In this photo, this dead man’s body is completely emaciated. The skin, tight over his bones, barely covers his skeleton. Bruises and scars stretch across his chest. This is not a victim at the side of the road during the Ottoman Turk’s Armenian Genocide. It is not a Holocaust survivor laying on the ground as allies liberated Buchenwald. It is not a human carcass left in the wake of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or the Hutu in Rwanda or Serbian forces in Bosnia. Mr. President, it is from the Human Rights Defender’s Office in Nagorno-Karabakh. And it is from August. Only weeks ago.

Because Mr. President, right now—as you sit there in the dais, and I stand here in the chamber—the Aliyev government in Azerbaijan is carrying out a campaign of heinous atrocities that bear the hallmarks of genocide against the Armenians in Artsakh. They have purposefully and viciously trapped an estimated 100,000 to 120,000 Christian Armenians in the Karabakh Mountains. There is only one road out connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia for people, food, medicine, and basic supplies, and the Azerbaijanis have blocked it since December of last year.

Despite some reports yesterday, no aid has moved. They have tried to deny their role but make no mistake, the Azerbaijani government is now wholeheartedly embracing this brutal blockade, denying the Armenian community food and fuel and medicine.

Aliyev and his regime are trying to starve these people into death or into political submission.

‘There are no crematories and there are no machete attacks,’ wrote the former prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, in a recent report. But he said, ‘starvation is the invisible genocide weapon. Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.’ This group of Armenians – talking about over 100,000 – will be destroyed in a few weeks. Not my observations, the observations of the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

In Artsakh, the shelves of stores are empty. Children wait in lines for the chance of finding bread to feed their grandparents who are too weak to leave the house. There is no gas for ambulances. According to the head doctor at one maternity hospital, miscarriages have nearly tripled. And the BBC reports that one in three deaths in Nagorno-Karabakh is from malnutrition.

For months, Azerbaijan was just doing the bare minimum—allowing the International Committee of the Red Cross limited access. But in July, Aliyev blocked even the Red Cross. And in complete defiance of the Geneva Conventions, Azerbaijan detained medical patients the Red Cross was transporting through the corridor.

This is not only outrageous at face value but an insult to the international community and a threat to brave Red Cross workers around the world. In addition to arresting sick and elderly residents—a few weeks ago—Azerbaijan also detained university students who were trying to go to Armenia to start the school year.

Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry says there is nothing to worry about. These concerns are just the result of, ‘propaganda and political manipulations spread by Armenia.’

Really? You’re blaming Armenia for this? That is a flat out lie. It was Azerbaijan—with Turkish backing—that launched the war in 2020. A war that uprooted close to 100,000 Armenians from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh. A war that killed 6,500 people. Now Aliyev blocks the Lachin Corridor and says ‘I’m not organizing ethnic cleansing.’

The same Azerbaijani President has also threatened to ‘chase away’ Armenian separatists ‘like dogs.’ Whose government issued a commemorative postage stamp showing a worker in hazmat gear spraying disinfectant on the region. We have seen and heard this kind of propaganda throughout history. It is the work of a regime intent on destroying and erasing this ancient Armenian community’s history in Nagorno-Karabakh.

But Mr. President—right now—the United States is failing. The United States is not meeting the humanitarian needs or publicly putting enough pressure on Aliyev to stop this campaign of ethnic cleansing. And I sincerely hope the State Department is not considering renewing the 907 waiver, which allows for security assistance to go to Azerbaijan. I don’t know how the United States can justify spending any kind of support—security or otherwise—to the regime in Baku.

We’ve seen a video of Azerbaijani forces killing unarmed Armenian soldiers in cold-blood.

We have reports of Azerbaijani soldiers sexually assaulting and mutilating an Armenian female soldier. So to send them assistance makes a mockery of the FREEDOM Support Act. Section 907 of this act is meant to ban security assistance to Azerbaijan until it is ‘Taking demonstrable steps to cease all blockades and other offensive uses of force against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.’

But still, the Department of State has waived section 907 over and over and over again. Suffice it to say, I am strongly opposed to having any aid go to a fighting force known for war crimes and the violation of human rights. I understand the dynamics of the broader region are complicated, but our fundamental principles underlying security assistance should not be.

When the United States untethers our security assistance from human rights and American values to focus on short-term tactical military assistance, it not only damages long-term American national security interests, it flies in the face of our duty to honor the victims and survivors of the Armenian Genocide and our duty to ensure history does not repeat itself. We cannot look away from a systematic attempt to eradicate and erase an entire people from the face of the earth.

In 2021, as my colleagues witnessed here on the Senate Floor, I was overcome with emotion to see President Biden join us in recognizing—for the first time by an American president—the Armenian Genocide. More than a century ago, Ottoman Turks perpetrated a systematic campaign to exterminate the Armenian populations. Through killings, through forced deportation, and yes, through starvation.

What the Turks did is an irrefutable, historical fact. The recognition of this fact was a huge step forward and I am proud to have played a role in that effort. Proud that I spoke up even as many American leaders stayed silent. Proud that I pressured State Department nominees and officials to acknowledge this historical reality. Proud that I introduced or co-sponsored resolutions recognizing the Armenian Genocide since before I came to the Senate in 2006. But Mr. President, make no mistake—fighting the denial of Armenian Genocide is not only about the past. It is also about the present.

That is why I’m calling on Aliyev to immediately release the Armenian prisoners of war. It is why I have been working on legislation to address the current humanitarian crisis in Artsakh. And it is why—when USAID Administrator Power came before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year—I pushed her to get humanitarian assistance to the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.

I believe that the United States can—and must—play an active role in addressing this conflict. Because the so-called Russian ‘peacekeepers’ who have supposedly been enforcing a ceasefire following Azerbaijan’s 2020 invasion have been—to no one’s surprise—wholly ineffective. As Azerbaijani forces began an incursion in September 2022, these Russian forces stood idly by. Moscow will no doubt seek to exploit any instability to its advantage, but they have also proved their lack of worth. Which is all the more reason that the United States must continue to play role.

We have been facilitating talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but we need to change our approach. We cannot continue to simply ‘facilitate’ talks. We have a responsibility to mediate, to pursue a meaningful—enforceable—agreement with the guaranteed rights, security, and dignity of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh as a central tenet. We must also encourage and—if necessary—broker direct discussions between political leaders in Stepanakert and Baku.

Of course, to be an honest broker means we need to tell the truth about Azerbaijan’s atrocities. We need to call out those individuals perpetrating this campaign of ethnic cleansing. We need to target them—including President Aliyev—with sanctions. We need to be cutting off their access to the wealth and oil money they have stashed away at financial institutions around the world, to their yachts and mansions across Europe.

The evidence is there and we must preserve it so that Aliyev can be held accountable for these atrocities. I have called on the United States Ambassador to the United Nations to introduce a resolution at the UN Security Council enforcing an end to Aliyev’s blockade. I am pleased to see that Secretary Blinken is personally engaging in the crisis now, but the message must be crystal clear. At the same time, the EU needs to step up too.

I was pleased to see High Representative Borell’s statement in July that the EU is ‘deeply concerned about the serious humanitarian [situation]’ in Nagorno-Karabakh… but I hope that actions accompany those words. Instead of just taking Azerbaijani gas and praising the country as a ‘crucial energy partner,’ they must also bring pressure to end the blockade.

How many leaders have somberly promised to learn history’s lessons and prevent future genocides? How many people have come to the floor of the Senate and said, ‘Never, never, again.’ How many people will have to die of starvation before we act? With Aliyev potentially moving troops along the border, we cannot say we didn’t see it coming.

This time must be different. In the past, plans to carry out genocide were clouded by distance or geography. But this time, we know. We know Aliyev is doing it right now, and we must not only hold him accountable for his actions, we must stop him from succeeding in erasing this Armenian community.We must stop him from starving these Armenians to death….or imposing political control by opening only the Agdam Corridor. This is not a substitution for opening the Lachin Corridor. It is not upholding the commitments of the 2020 agreement. Using basic humanitarian, food, and medical supplies as a political weapon is not acceptable.

And we have the power to do it—if we act now. Given the chance, who here among us would not go back and stop the Turks from rounding up the first Armenians victims of the genocide who were hung in the streets of Istanbul? Or the Serb forces who gave Bosnian Muslims a 24-hour ultimatum to surrender? Or the Rwandan radio broadcasts inciting violence?

Unlike those crimes of the past, we are living on the brink, right now. And so to the Biden administration, I would say, now is the time to step up and protect this vulnerable population. To the international community, now is the time to work together to bring pressure to stop this tragedy from unfolding in front of our eyes. And to the Armenian people, trapped in this blockade, with no food, know that you have friends and allies, here in the United States Senate and around the world, who will not rest until you are safe and secure. Hang on, hang on.

And to the men organizing and carrying out this brutal campaign, we will hold you accountable for your crimes, even if it takes a life time.

You will pay a price.

You will face justice.

And I certainly will not rest until you do so.”

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19:43, 12 September 2023