In the South Caucasus, schools in the Armenian enclave in Nagorno-Karabakh were closed on Friday January 20. This province has been the subject of a blockade for more than a month by Azerbaijan, which blocks the only open road between Karabakh and Armenia.
With our correspondent in the region, Regis Gente
These events take place in the context of long-standing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have clashed twice for control of Karabakh, an Azerbaijani region in Soviet times mainly populated by Armenians and which seceded at the beginning of the 1990s. After winning the “Second Karabakh War” at the end of 2020, Azerbaijan claims the implementation of all the points of the agreement signed on November 9, 2020, while the Armenian side says it fears an ethnic cleansing enterprise .
In addition to the road blockade imposed on Karabakh for 41 days by Azerbaijan, here is the secessionist entity subject to incessant power and gas cuts.
As a result, the Karabakh authorities decided to temporarily close 117 schools, sending home 20,000 students.
All week, temperatures flirted with zero degrees in the mountainous province.
Everything therefore points to a tightening of the blockade maintained by so-called Azerbaijani environmental defenders, who occupy a segment of the Lachin corridor.
According to observers in the region, it would be for Baku to put pressure on the Armenian side to make it yield on a certain number of points provided for in the agreement of November 9, 2020, in particular the opening of a road crossing the southern Armenia to allow Azerbaijan to be directly linked to its province of Nakhitchevan.
The Armenian side accuses Baku of causing a humanitarian crisis in the enclave, in order to eventually scare away the 120,000 or so inhabitants who still live there.
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