Terrible wars all over the world, from Ukraine to the Middle East, should not obscure one of the most shocking events to take place in 2023: the mass exodus of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, over the span of a few days. It was one of the largest and most sudden ethnic cleansings in recent history.
That crime had a perpetrator: the despotic regime of President Ilham Aliyev in Azerbaijan. That perpetrator should have to answer for these crimes—even if it is a petrostate that has some value to the West as a supplier of oil and natural gas.
The facts are not really in dispute. More than 100,000 indigenous ethnic Armenians fled the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in the days after a lightning military attack by Azerbaijan on Sept. 19. That attack came in the 10th month of a blockade imposed by Azerbaijan on the enclave, with Azerbaijani troops and operatives blocking the Lachin Corridor, which links Nagorno-Karabakh to the outside world. On June 15, Azerbaijan completely sealed off the region, even barring the Red Cross—violating a desist order from the International Court of Justice in February.
Deaths by starvation began, and respected international jurists like Luis Moreno Ocampo, the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court , began declared the situation a genocide. Aditionally, former United Nations expert on genocide Juan Mendez warned of serious risks of genocide facing the population.
The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, known to Armenians as Artsakh, is complex. The area was the heartland of old Armenian empires, but was gifted by the Soviets to the Azerbaijani Socialist Republic. When Azerbaijan and Armenia both became independent after the Soviet collapse, a war left the enclave as a self-governing entity with a land link to Armenia. Azerbaijan attacked in 2020 to regain much of the land. In 2023 it managed to empty what was left of the indigenous Armenians.
Aliyev's apologists will argue that they bear no culpability because those who fled did so of their own volition—magically deciding as one to leave behind properties and jobs and an entire beloved homeland. They will claim innocence because those fleeing were not ordered to leave or herded onto trucks or prodded in the back by bayonets or guns.
But real cases of international criminal tribunals tell us that no such orders, trucks, or weapons are needed for an exodus to qualify as forced and amount to a crime. Take, for instance, the case of Vojislav Šešelj, leader of the far-right ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party in Belgrade, who was first acquitted and then convicted on appeal of crimes against humanity in the Yugoslav wars. The fundamental factor that eventually secured Šešelj's (partial) conviction, in 2018, was his role in incitement to violence and hate speech.
The Appeals Chamber assessed that his inflammatory rhetoric constituted criminal conduct. It considered the context of coercion, harassment, and intimidation, as well as evidence of regular threats and violence. The Appeals Chamber ultimately decided that Šešelj bore direct responsibility for the crimes against humanity of persecution, deportation, and other inhumane acts for instigating the exodus of non-Serb civilians.
I was then a legal officer for the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (the ICTY's successor tribunal), advising the judges on the implementation of international criminal, humanitarian, and human rights standards in the cases involving Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. As such, I worked on the decision that convicted Šešelj—and I cannot help but see the parallels with Aliyev.
Aliyev has produced a consistent stream of radically anti-Armenian hate speech, calling them "dogs," "wild beasts," and "jackals," among other dehumanizing slurs. He has called into question Armenians' right to exist in the region and instituted an anti-Armenian curriculum in the Azerbaijani education system, where children are taught that Armenians are treacherous and deceitful and must be eliminated.
Many of his slurs were specifically directed at the people of Artsakh. He has said that total victory over the Armenians of Artsakh will constitute a fulfillment of a "historic mission." On the ground, his troops carried out well-documented atrocities against Armenian civilians and soldiers. His regime has also lauded the Ottoman war criminals who carried out the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923.
That is why the Armenian population had no choice but to flee in September. They knew they would be massacred.
Just like Šešelj, Aliyev is guilty of promoting and inciting ethnic violence and hatred, leading to ethnic cleansing and atrocities. Just like Šešelj, Aliyev gave fiery speeches and carried out policies that led to crimes against humanity. Šešelj was accused of promoting propaganda that contributed to the dehumanization of non-Serb populations, which in turn facilitated their mistreatment and expulsion. The same can be said of Aliyev.
It was international pressure, particularly from Western countries and human rights organizations, that helped create the mechanisms that brought Šešelj and others like him to a measure of justice. World governments have mostly looked the other way so far in the case of Aliyev. It is an inconsistency that shames them.
Sheila Paylan (@SheilaPaylan) is an international criminal lawyer and human rights expert with more than 15 years of experience advising the United Nations. She regularly consults for a variety of international organizations, NGOs, think tanks, and governments.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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