On November 3, 1896, Jean Jaurès admonished the ministers present in the Hemicycle and “hypocritical” Europe with a round of remonstrations, accusing them of ignoring the massacres committed by the Turks in Armenia… Nearly a century and half later, while a lightning offensive by Azerbaijan in the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh brought the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh to its knees, and forced more than 100,000 Armenians to flee, the European Union maintains its trade relations with Baku.
And although France has given the green light for the delivery of military equipment to Armenia, Brussels has so far not taken any sanctions against the dictatorial regime of Ilham Aliyev. This, even though the Azeri army, via a blockade of the Lachin corridor, has suffocated for nearly eight months the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, populated mainly by Armenians of the Christian faith and the subject of great tensions since the end from the 1980s.
The eternal restart
Like an air of déjà vu, of eternal beginnings. This feeling, which has invaded the Armenian diaspora for decades, has been strengthened in recent days with the loss of Artsakh. “We are completely desperate, we no longer expect anything from the international community or the European Union,” confides Magali Avadikian, who participated in Lyon in demonstrations in support of the Armenians of Artsakh organized in several European cities. But Place Antonin-Poncet, Lyon’s meeting point for the mobilization, seems very empty on this Sunday afternoon. Only around a hundred people made the trip. “Many Armenians went to demonstrate in Brussels [pour dénoncer] the complicity of Europe”, tempers Lisa Gilibert, volunteer at the humanitarian association the Blue Cross of Armenians of France.
But, for Magali Avadikian, “people simply don’t believe it anymore”. “We were much more mobilized in the 1990s, today, it’s over, we lost Artsakh, we had to wake up before, now, it’s too late,” storms the Lyonnaise, whose parents have fled the war in the last century. “European countries did nothing a hundred years ago, there is no reason for them to do anything today,” resigns Alex Sardarian, master’s student at Essec, d Armenian origin. “No one helps the Armenians, it’s as if we don’t exist,” says Lerna Balian, who lives in France and part of her family remains in Armenia. And to scold: “Let a massacre take place for oil and gas…” in reference to the gas contract signed between the European Union and Azerbaijan in July 2022, almost six months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
An agreement that Brussels has, to date, still not denounced, despite the military operation of September 19 on Nagorno-Karabakh, which resulted in the dissolution of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh . From her participation in the reconstruction of Artsakh after the 1988-1994 war, Magali Avadikian has kept in touch with many residents of the separatist enclave. “Artsakh had to fall definitively into the hands of the Azeris for the French media to talk about it,” she gets annoyed. Convinced that, “if the press had made it a subject, the governments, under pressure, would have been forced to help the Artsakhis, who had been dying of hunger for months”. Like others, she feeds her social networks almost daily with information on the situation in the separatist enclave. “For months, no media spoke about the blockade, others had to do it for them.”
A “feeling of helplessness”
Since the end of 2022, Baku has continued to multiply pretexts to obstruct traffic on the Lachin corridor, until decreeing the closure of checkpoints on July 11. Under blockade for more than eight months, the inhabitants of Artsakh have been cut off from the rest of the world, taken prisoner in a territory which largely depends on external supplies. “At the start of the blockade, my father told me that he was able to eat almost normally. But, little by little, the businesses emptied, and began to close one by one. From there, he quickly became very difficult for him to find something to eat,” says Artyom Mayilyan, a student in Paris for a year, and born in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, which his father was forced to flee the day after the fall of the separatist republic. A forty-hour journey, during which Artyom remained without any news from him. “I was terrified at the idea that he could be kidnapped by Azeris on the road, especially since I know someone who was killed in the explosion at the fuel depot,” which occurred on September 25 , and which caused the death of 170 people.
Artyom Mayilyan, born in Stepanakert, capital of Artsakh
Faced with the humanitarian crisis experienced by those whom many in the diaspora refer to as “their brothers”, the Armenian community is steeped in a feeling of helplessness. “It’s very hard for us, we want to go, we want to put on the uniform, we want to defend ourselves because no one defends us,” shouts Lerna Balian, part of whom the family lives in Armenia. Aged around twenty, Artyom Mayilyan, who arrived in France only a year ago, follows the publications of his relatives back in the country from his Facebook news feed. The day after the Azeri offensive, his hands froze when he came across the publication of a former neighbor, whose nephew died during the assault. “As children, we played together so many times in my neighborhood. It’s a reality that I still have a hard time coming to terms with.”
“Act for those who are still here”
But, while new exchanges of gunfire resounded at the border on Monday October 2, Lisa Gilibert is preparing to leave for Armenia with around twenty volunteers from the Blue Cross of the Armenians of France, to help populations in exile. “There are the dead, but we must act for those who are still there, who have lost everything, who have been rationed, who have not been treated, who have no clothes to face the freezing temperatures of the mountains Armenian women in winter”, insists this French woman born in Lebanon to Armenian parents.
On the program, distribution of food, clothing and shoes mainly. To finance these purchases, the association, also known as HOM and present in 27 countries, relies more than ever on financial donations. “It’s very generous to donate clothes, but the problem is that they don’t always correspond to the needs of the local populations. While money donations allow both to buy according to the needs of the exiles, but also to make the Armenian economy work, since everything is bought in Armenia”, insists Lisa Gilibert.
A support committee to free Artsakh leaders
If the humanitarian situation succeeds in mobilizing, the question of the independence leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh indicted for terrorism, and held hostage by Baku still remains “far too marginalized”. “To endorse these imprisonments amounts to making democratic representatives look like terrorists,” fumes Gilbert-Luc Devinaz, president of the France-Armenia friendship group in the Senate.
The socialist senator, whose personal and political history is closely linked to the Armenian cause, has been working for several days to set up a support committee to obtain the release of the leaders of Artsakh. “We must above all not let the Azeris think that they would have a free hand to act as they want in the region,” adds Sarah Tanzilli, deputy for Rhône, and former president of the house of Armenian culture in Décines- Charpieu (Rhone).
Strengthening Armenian military capabilities
Especially since the Baku regime does not intend to stop in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Azeri president, Ilham Aliev, shows no modesty about his ambitions. “Today, Armenia is our territory,” he declared last December during a council of ministers. In their sights, another Azeri enclave, wedged between Armenia, Turkey and Iran, and which is not directly accessible from Azerbaijan: Nakhichevan. Baku’s plan? Annex the Armenian corridor of Zangezour to trace a land continuum to Turkey, passing through the Nakhichevan enclave. “We know full well that the Azerbaijanis, supported by Turkey, will not stop there. They will continue to persecute the Armenians, because they have a visceral hatred towards us,” thinks Alex Sardarian, a business school student at Paris.
Alex Sardarian, student of Armenian origin
Faced with the excessive ambitions of Baku, supported by almost all of the border countries – with the exception of Iran – Armenia is a dwarf. Although neighbors, the two countries do not play in the same court. Azerbaijan’s military budget alone represents Armenia’s total budget. “What do you want to do in the face of drones that shoot at our young people, sent to war,” breathes Alex Sardarian, who regularly discusses it with his father, owner of a carpet shop in the center of Yerevan. The young man returned from a stay of several weeks in Armenia, “his head filled with images of tombstones of Armenian soldiers born in 2002, in 2003, in 2004, young people like [lui]”.
But, for many elected officials, France, “Armenia’s main ally”, must at all costs help Yerevan to strengthen its military capabilities. “The Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, assured that discussions in this direction had been opened with his Armenian counterpart”, relates the deputy of the presidential majority Sarah Tanzilli, who requested that sanctions be taken against the leaders Azeris. “I have confidence in the government which will be able to find solutions to help our Armenian brothers, things are going in the right direction,” wants to reassure Sarah Tanzilli. It remains to be seen whether the announcements from the head of French diplomacy, traveling to Armenia, will be enough to reassure the more than 600,000 Armenians in France of the “support” and “solidarity” of their adopted country.