Recent footage and photographs from funerals in Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh), an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, have emerged. Parents weep beside small, excavated holes where their children were laid to rest. Kids sit and cry beside their parents' graves. Hundreds of grieving Armenians gather at the cemetery in the city of Stepanakert, their voices echoing their despair and grief after the massacre of their relatives on Sept. 19.
Armenians living on their ancestral lands were met with Azeri aggression a few days ago, amid the absence of bread, electricity, and medicine, due to the monthslong blockade by the petroleum-fueled regime.
This tragedy could have been prevented, yet world leaders looked away, pretending the Azeri oppression that led to it didn't exist. The signs of ethnic cleansing were evident all along; no one today can claim they didn't see it coming. History will harshly judge those who could have acted but chose not to do anything to help.
In the United States, representatives and senators, along with celebrities like Kim Kardashian, and Cher, implored President Joe Biden to act. Last month, a former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) spoke out, asserting that there was "reasonable basis to believe" the Azeri regime's repression of ethnic Armenians met the U.N.'s criteria for genocide.
For 10 long months, Azerbaijan has isolated 120,000 Armenians from the rest of the world, leaving them without essential resources, like food and medicine. The media's silence on these atrocities shook my faith as a journalist, and raised questions about our profession's purpose—if not to objectively report and help halt crimes against humanity, what then?
The European Union (EU) was another disappointment. In the summer of 2022, the EU struck gas deals with the Azeri regime. Is that why the EU has been quiet about the ethnic cleansing? Turkey likewise has demonstrated its support for Azerbaijan time after time.
The silence of world leaders, the media, and other influential actors paved the way for Azerbaijan's showering of bombs upon Artsakh, some were even aimed at civilians for an "anti-terrorist operation." No one cared about the Armenians of Artsakh before bombs started falling from the sky.
The death toll remains uncertain, but an estimated 200 lives have been lost, according to sources on the ground. More than 200 were injured in a recent fuel depot blast in Nagorno-Karabakh.
My social media feed is flooded with grieving Armenians. Armenian activists in the diaspora who tried relentlessly to sound the alarm but weren't heard are now living their worst nightmares. Armenians on the Azeri-Armenian border, who are hosting refugees, openly weep as they embrace their compatriots, including the elderly, those with health impairments, and families with children who fled their homeland.
When I call fellow journalists and human rights activists in Artsakh and Armenia, they are equally despondent. They send more photos now of Armenians fleeing and crossing the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia, faces etched with fear and uncertainty.
Other images, depicting Armenians fleeing the Ottoman genocide of Christians in 1915, are juxtaposed with those of Armenians fleeing today. The resemblance is chilling and heart-wrenching. Today, as in 1915, the world is failing them once again.
The least President Biden and other world leaders could do is take swift action to prevent further violence and provide essential aid to refugees in dire need. This might spare the history books from recording yet another painful chapter of betrayal.
Nuri Kino is an independent investigative multi-award-winning reporter and minority rights expert.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
