Delegation Seeks to Preserve Human Rights

Representatives for the Armenian-American community presented the bleak reality facing Armenians living in their ancestral homeland within the Republic of Artsakh, also known as Nagorno Karabakh.

Distinguished speakers addressed the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission to seek congressional measures that would prevent the country, Azerbaijan - along with its ally, Turkey - from continuing the Armenian Genocide against the Armenians of Artsakh.

Azerbaijan has engaged in a blockade of Artsakh since the beginning of December last year, and humanitarian aid has been limited while the supply of food, gas, and medical supplies into Artsakh has been kept to a minimum.

Human rights activists note that even though the Republic of Azerbaijan is a secular nation in name, its large Muslim population does contribute a large contribution to anti-Christian sentiment against Armenians.

Evidence of Islamic-motivated aggression against Christian Armenians has been presented to the International Criminal Court and has shown the desecration of religious sites, as well as chants to Allah whilst Azeri soldiers are seen cutting of the ears and slicing the throats of Armenian soldiers and civilians.

The Chairman for the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission assured the public that Wednesday’s hearing would be but the first of more hearings to arrive at solutions to prevent the Armenians from being ethnically cleansed from their homeland.

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History of the Caucasus

Conflict in the southern Caucasus has been present since antiquity, owing to its position as a crossroads between various empires - Roman-Persian, Russian-Iranian, as well as Arab, Turkic, and Mongolian empires.

Armenians - they refer to themselves as Hayq - have been written about in Ancient historical sources, its founder Hayk was a general under the biblical Babylonian king, Nimrod. Hayk left Babylonian service and when Babylon went to war with Hayk, Hayk emerged victorious and established the Armenian line in Hayastan.

Azerbaijan, which in the present-day lays claim to all Armenian lands, didn’t emerge as its own ethnic tribe until the Seljuq Turks invaded the territory controlled by the Roman-Byzantines and Arabs in the 11th century. These Turks blended with Persian-Iranians to eventually become the Azeris which occupied northern Persia (modern-day Iran) and the southern Caucasus.

Azeris had a large population in and around Baku in the early 1900s, but they had never ruled over the area. They were mostly poor and had been subject to the larger Persian Empire, and then to Russia.

Armenians - along with Russian - contributed the bulk of the intellectual, cultural, and economy to Baku, until the small population of educated Azeris partnered with the Ottoman Empire in 1918 to drive out Russian troops and established Azeris as the ruling class, which they enforced through vandalism, assault, and mass murder of the local Armenians.

“Azerbaijan,” therefore didn’t enter into the lexicon until the first World War, and has engaged in conflict with Armenians since then in order to build up a national identity for itself.