Yerevan Slams UN Mission To Karabakh

Armenian officials on Tuesday accused a United Nations mission of covering up “ethnic cleansing” in Nagorno-Karabakh after visiting the region on Sunday in the wake of Azerbaijan’s military offensive.

October 3, 2023 – The mission led by the head of the UN office in Baku traveled to Karabakh after its practically entire ethnic Armenian population fled to Armenia, unwilling to live under Azerbaijani rule. In a statement on the one-day trip, it said it was “struck” by the exodus.

“The mission did not come across any reports — neither from the local population interviewed nor from the interlocutors — of incidences of violence against civilians following the latest ceasefire,” read the statement.

It did not clarify whether the UN officials conducted those interviews in the presence of Azerbaijani officials. Authorities in Karabakh say dozens of local civilians were killed and scores of others went missing during the Azerbaijani offensive launched on September 19. Their mostly small communities were heavily shelled by Azerbaijani forces, according to the authorities.

The UN mission said it “saw no damage to civilian public infrastructure” in Stepanakert. It noted that it did not get access to rural areas.

“The so-called UN mission in Nagorno-Karabakh did their best to legitimize the ethnic cleansing, arbitrary detentions, destruction of civilian infrastructure and other crimes committed by Azerbaijan,” charged Edmon Marukian, an Armenian ambassador-at-large.

“These guys are discrediting the UN as an institution,” he wrote on the X social media platform, calling for a UN investigation into their trip.

Vladimir Vartanian, a senior Armenian lawmaker, also criticized the mission. He said he will try to find out whether UN officials in New York trust its findings.

By contrast, the mission was praised by Baku, with a senior aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev posting excerpts from its statement page on his X page. An Azerbaijani analyst, Shahin Jafarli, said Aliyev’s administration will use the statement to deny Armenian accusations of ethnic cleansing and other war crimes.

Over 100,000 Karabakh Armenians fled to Armenia in the course of last week, leaving their homeland almost fully depopulated. Marco Succi, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Stepanakert, suggested on Tuesday that only a few hundred people remain behind in the Karabakh capital, including the sick, disabled and elderly.

“The city is now completely deserted,” Reuters quoted Succi as telling reporters via video link from the city.

He said his ICRC team is now combing Stepanakert’s empty streets with megaphones seeking stranded residents, They found Susanna, an elderly, bed-ridden cancer patient who was beginning to show signs of Anemia and malnutrition despite provisions left by her neighbors. She was evacuated by ambulance to Armenia.

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