WASHINGTON, D.C.—Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) Gegham Stepanyan and former State Minister Artak Beglaryan concluded a two-week advocacy mission to Washington, D.C. that called on U.S. congressional leaders, administration officials and a broad array of faith-based and human rights groups to hold Azerbaijan accountable for the genocide against Artsakh’s 150,000 indigenous Armenian Christians and to provide support to refugees as mechanisms are explored to ensure their safe return to the homes from which they were forcibly displaced.
The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) joined with Stepanyan and Beglaryan in over 60 meetings and briefings with congressional offices, coinciding with the introduction of two resolutions that would cut military aid to Azerbaijan’s genocidal regime, holding Azerbaijan accountable for its crimes.
In the Senate, Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) introduced a bipartisan resolution (S.Res.540) that would require the State Department to provide a detailed description of widely-documented human rights abuses perpetrated by Azerbaijan, pursuant to Section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act, which could block all military aid to the genocidal Aliyev regime.
U.S. Representative Mike Lawler (R-NY) was joined by Congressional Armenian Caucus co-chairs Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) and House Foreign Affairs Committee member Gabe Amo (D-RI) in introducing the House counterpart (H.R.7288) of the Senate’s unanimously-adopted “Armenian Protection Act,” (S.3000), which would block U.S. security aid to Azerbaijan for two years.
Stepanyan and Beglaryan offered eyewitness accounts of the brutal realities of Azerbaijan’s ten-month blockade of Artsakh, which culminated in the September 2023 genocidal attack that forcibly emptied Artsakh of its indigenous Armenian population. In addition to the passage of the latest legislation urging an end to U.S. support for Azerbaijan’s genocidal actions, the Artsakh people’s advocates urged:
— Sanctions on Azerbaijan, including the enforcement of Section 907 and the application of Magnitsky sanctions on Aliyev government officials for war crimes and ethnic cleansing committed during the 2020 Azerbaijan-Turkey attacks against Armenia and Artsakh and subsequent genocidal aggression.
— U.S. aid for Artsakh’s forcibly displaced Armenians, including housing and job placement assistance, until a secure mechanism can be put in place through international oversight and mediation with Artsakh authorities to guarantee the safe and dignified return of forcibly displaced Armenians to their Artsakh homes.
— Expanded U.S. and international efforts to help secure the immediate release of Artsakh leaders, POWs and all the other captured persons illegally held by Azerbaijan since the 2020 Azerbaijan/Turkey attacks and the 2023 aggression.
— Preservation of Artsakh’s Armenian cultural and religious heritage already vandalized or under threat of destruction by Azerbaijan.
Stepanyan and Beglaryan stressed that without international efforts to address the Artsakh people’s right to safe return, dignified life in Artsakh and justice for the crimes committed, it will be impossible to establish sustainable peace in the region. They also emphasized that the systemic anti-Armenian hatred fomented by the Azerbaijani government must be eradicated to ensure an enduring settlement of the conflict and regional stability.
While in Washington, D.C., Beglaryan and Stepanyan participated in the International Religious Freedom Summit, co-chaired by Amb. Sam Brownback, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom (2018-2021) and Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights.
During a presentation made to a diverse group of faith-based organizations and U.S. government officials, Stepanyan explained, “I speak before you today not just as the human rights defender (Ombudsman) of my people but as a witness and a survivor of genocide.” He stressed that the world is witnessing the systematic erasure of “the Christian and world heritage of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), of its ancient churches and hallowed cemeteries, now standing silent under the shadow of occupation and desecration by the dictatorial Aliyev regime of Azerbaijan.” Stepanyan urged faith leaders and government officials to rally together and serve as “the shield that protects the vulnerable, the voice that speaks for the silenced and the light that pierces the darkness of cultural erasure. Only then can we ensure that the soul of Artsakh, its ancient and sacred Christian heritage, is not lost forever.”
“Artsakh’s rights were center stage these past two weeks in Washington, D.C., as two of the Republic’s most eloquent voices – Artak Beglaryan and Gegham Stepanyan – made the case to U.S. legislators and international religious freedom leaders for the safe return of indigenous Armenians to their ancient homeland,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “Over the course of dozens of congressional meetings, legislators heard first-hand about the Artsakh genocide and explored the concrete U.S. steps needed to restore this integral part of the Armenian homeland.”
Beglaryan and Stepanyan’s visit was part of a 120,0000 Reasons coalition effort, supported by the Tufenkian Foundation and the Philos Project, and over 20 human rights, faith-based, and ethnic organizations, calling on the U.S. government to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its genocide against Artsakh’s Armenian population and to prevent further aggression against Armenia.
The Artsakh people’s representatives also participated in a fireside chat, organized by the George Washington University Armenian Law Students’ Association, where they shared the ongoing challenges facing Artsakh’s displaced Armenians and the need for concrete political and legal action. They also shared their powerful message of survival and issued an international call to action during a series of press interviews.
In addition to educational efforts in the nation’s capital, the trip also included a robust series of meetings with international organizations and community leaders in New York. While in Washington, DC, they met with the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Earlier, Stepanyan and Beglaryan participated in meetings with California state and local government officials, various university law programs and community forums organized through the Armenian Bar Association, in conjunction with their annual meeting.
The Artsakh advocates offered an overview of their meetings in the U.S. during a press conference held in Yerevan upon their return, available here.
Artsakh is forever gone like Western Armenia, no matter how painful and difficult this is to process. It is crucial to rebuild the lives of the Artsakhis in Armenia and to unconditionally give them Armenian citizenship, and to safeguard the internationally recognized borders of Armenia. Armenia itself is at stake, with its territory occupied by Azerbaijan and which has set its sights on southern Armenia. Armenia has not been in this much peril since 1915-1921 and so ruderless. The utterly incompetent and cowardly Pashinyan sacrificed Artsakh and is totally passive on Azerbaijani attacks and encroachment on Armenian territory. Would anyone be surprised if he sacrifices southern Armenia? His position and self-interests come first, not the Armenian nation and Armenia. No wonder why he doesn’t give Armenian citizenship to the Artsakhis, since they would vote him out of office for sacrifing them. Just as we thought it couldn’t become worse, and worse it did become under him. Armenia may be cursed with its geographical location, but to elect such an incompetent and cowardly person as leader, and to relect him after he agreed to the ceasefire in the Second Artsakh War, which proved to be the death knell for Artsakh, is mindboggling.
Armenians must stop living in fantasy land.
No Armenian is ever going back.
After all, who would trust a Turk with their life?
We all know what the Turks do to Armenian women.
Armenians must focus on building Fortress Armenia.
It’s the only way forward.
Armenia had the option of being like a Belarus or a Chechnya, Armenians “democratically” chose to be like a Kurdistan instead. Armenians are a politically illiterate people who suffer from a severe case of arrogance and cognitive dissonance. The last 30 years proved that Armenians are not ready for nor even worthy of independence. Being that Armenia is located in the south Caucasus and not in central America, and being that we live in a Machiavellian world, the country faces two real options: Russification or Turkification. Anyone claiming that there is a third or western option is in-effect preaching Turkification. For Armenia’s sake, the sooner Russians annex Armenia the better. Everything else is a pipe dream that will only prolong Armenia’s misery…
If Armenia chose to be like Chechenya then that would mean having had two wars with Russia post Soviet independence, hmm
If Armenia chose to be like Belarus it could have the same head of state for the last 30 years and exist in a curious time warp and be complicit in Russian military action against a neighbour and as Russia has gone against Georgia not Azerbaijan that would be interesting situation for Armenia to be theoretically be collusion with. Pipe dream; Armenia knows about pipeline dreams being spoilt where due to Russia despite being independent and at the time clearly pro Russian, Russia showed what this meant by ensuring that the gas pipeline from Iran where
it is 1420mm bore dropped to 700mm bore upon reaching Armenia. More independent Azerbaijan despite a common border with Russia had no such interference with its pipeline from it’s gas field to Georgia and on to Turkey earning them vast amounts of money enabling them to reverse their 1994 defeat in 2020 . Armenia political illiteracy and arrogance was to assume that Russia would always be at their side and the Arktash issue could be allowed to roll on and not seek a settlement when they had the position of strength since Russia wouldn’t allow Armenia to loose surely this was the cognitive dissonance which was as entrenched as the trenches on the line of control until being displaced by force from Azerbaijan a key buyer of Russian weapons. The arrogance was to assume that the 1994 victory was to settle the issue and deter Azerbaijan indefinitely.
I believe Armenians and Azeris can live together peacefully: We should turn Sevan into a shared peace lake. Both countries should have access to its shores!
@Selim
How much more of Armenia’s land would you like?
That is a pipe dream, a fantasy, hence by definition stupid, and not the real world. After all the wars, massacres and ethnic cleansings, you expect Armenians and Azeris to live together? That must never be allowed to happen and is not going to happen anyway. And why should Armenia give up its own territory and share Lake Sevan with the aggresive and expansionist Azerbaijan, after Armenia has lost so much territory over the past centuries, decades and in the past few years to Azerbaijan, which wants to wipe Armenia off the map with the collusion of Turkey? Yours is a typical pan-Turkist pipe dream, in which Armenia is the “obstacle” for the pan-Turkic corridor and “empire” and which you want to truncate or remove alltogether, which you are sugarcoating with insincere phrases like “Armenians and Azeris can live together peacefully”.
WASTE OF TIME! YOU MAY AS WELL HAVE MEETINGS AND DESIRES TO COLONIZE JUPITER. GET REAL. I AM ARMENIAN AND AM A REALIST. NO WAY ARMENIANS HAVE ENOUGH POWER TO SQUEEZE AND FORCE THEIR WAY BACK INTO ARTSAKH, BUILD WALLS, AN IRON DOME, HAVE MILITARY, WEAPONS, SOLDIERS, SECRET NUCLEAR CAPABILITIES (LIKE ISRAEL)….SO ON AND SO FORTH. STOP DAY DREAMING AND WASTING MONEY FLYING AROUND TO HAVE MEETINGS WITH POLITICIANS WHO DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO SPELL ARTSAKH OR WHERE IT IS–THEY JUST WANT THE ARMENIANS TO VOTE FOR THEM. SPEND YOUR TIME STRENGTHENING ARMENIA, MAKING IT PROSPEROUS, SAFE, MODERN, AND GIVE HOPE TO THE PEOPLE THAT LIVE THERE SO THEY DON’T MOVE TO GLENDALE.