ROME, Nov 04 (IPS) – On December 12, 2022, a delegation of Azerbaijani environmentalists blocked the only road connecting Armenia with the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. These stories were not noticed by the mainstream media, perhaps because they were difficult to understand.
How can a group called environmental activists prevent the free movement of people and basic goods? And where exactly is Nagorno-Karabakh? Ten months later, the entire population of the area was fleeing to Armenia in what many described as a televised act of genocide.
By the time the world started looking for this Armenian place on the map of the Caucasus, it was too late. “Probably no one saw it coming,” he wrote The New York Times about the events that removed Nagorno-Karabakh from the map—and from history. And it is a sad history.
During the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis caused a wave of forced deportations. In the disputed palace, the first Karabakh war (1988-1994) ended with the victory of Armenia which led to the migration of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis to Azerbaijan.
For 25 years, Armenians in this area enjoyed a republic that was theirs and nobody knew about it. They renamed it after its ancient name: Artakh. At the time, Azerbaijan used this period to invest oil and gas profits in a sophisticated military force.
They were used in the second Nagorno-Karabakh war: Azerbaijan’s victory was declared in the fall of 2020 after 44 days of panic. However, for Baku, it was an “incomplete” victory: the Armenians had lost two-thirds of the territory under their control, but remained in the capital and the surrounding regions.
By the fall of 2021, Azerbaijan was strengthening its power, destroying villages near its southern border with Armenia and seizing large swathes of land. In 2022, launch a large-scale artillery attack along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.
But 2023 was worse. The beginning of the end came with those new members of pro-government groups calling themselves “environmental activists.” With the support of the Azerbaijani army, the blockade lasted nine months, until the Armenians fledin abundance in late September following Baku’s final, decisive attack on the enclave.
Former International Court of Justice prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo called Azerbaijan’s violence “genocide.”
Since then, the displaced community has watched helplessly as videos posted by the Azerbaijani military show the looting of abandoned houses, the desecration of graves, and the destruction of archaeological treasures, including 1,000-year-old churches.
There is also concern about the situation of Armenian prisoners of war. Baku admits to holding 23, although human rights groups estimate the number to be over 100. Information about their status and legal proceedings is unknown.
Gold
On June 20, 2023, massive protests broke out in the Azerbaijani city of Söyüdlü—200 kilometers west of Baku—after the announcement of a second artificial lake intended to store toxic waste from a local gold mine.
Residents had previously reported serious health problems, including high rates of cancer, due to water and soil contamination in the same lake that was built in 2012. Crops and livestock were also affected.
Unlike six months earlier, the protest was severely suppressed by the police. Access to the media was restricted, and several people were arrested on bogus charges including “drug trafficking.”
Once again, the news did not reach outside the Caucasus-oriented outlets. In addition, it would be difficult to explain to the whole world that the country hosting the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) this November (from the 11th to the 22nd) was using great power to suppress the environmental protest.
How could this be explained—a conference organized by a country whose economy depends on the extraction of oil and gas from the Caspian? Why does the United Nations trust a nation that regularly attacks its Armenian neighbors and arrests or deports political opponents, human rights activists and journalists?
On September 24, Human Rights Watch noted that this is the third year in a row that the COP has been held under “repressive conditions that severely restrict freedom of expression and peaceful assembly” (previously in Dubai and Egypt).
Azerbaijan has been ruled by one family and its allies since 1993. Ilham Aliyev, the current president of Azerbaijan, took office in 2003 after the death of his father.
On September 1, the country held parliamentary elections “in an area with political and legal boundaries” that “lacked political majority,” according to observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Caviar and gas
Investigations by groups such as the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) reveal that the Aliyev family’s vast wealth is spread across many offshore companies. Azerbaijan is ranked 154 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perception Index.
It is also “one of the freest places in the world,” according to Freedom House, a Washington-based NGO. Currently, 23 Azerbaijani journalists are imprisoned in a country that ranks 164 out of 180 in Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index.
However, none of this seems to matter to the outside world.
For years, gaining influence by bribing European politicians with lavish gifts has been a central focus of Azerbaijan’s international policy. Western journalists, researchers, academics, and parliamentarians have also been courting Baku in a practice known as “caviar diplomacy.”
This strategy played a major role in protecting Azerbaijan from sanctions aimed at combating the Aliyev regime’s disregard for human rights.
The gas agreements between Brussels and Baku in 2022, aimed at reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian gas after the invasion of Ukraine, support this approach. The fact that Azerbaijan itself imports gas from Russia does not seem to be an issue for the EU.
During the eleven days of this conference, thousands of politicians and business leaders will enjoy the welcome of one of the most repressive and corrupt governments in the world.
The high profile of the event will allow Azerbaijan to achieve one of its main goals: to clean its image in the eyes of the world and distract from its structural issues regarding human rights and democracy.
However, the silver lining is that this autumn was the calmest in years for Armenians: everyone knew that Baku would avoid an attack before the Climate Summit that could damage its international image.
However, what the coming winter may bring, is not yet certain.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
Source link
