Is there or is there no Armenia without Artsakh? Has the public going to “real” Armenia lost Artsakh forever, or will it be brought back at some point? These questions stir up those displaced from Artsakh today.
The leadership of Armenia and Azerbaijan consider that the issue of Artsakh is closed. Meanwhile, many of the people of Artsakh, realizing that September 19-20, 2023, when Azerbaijan invaded Artsakh, were the last two days of the history of their homeland, still believe that some day they will return to their homeland.
For them, the President of Artsakh is not a former president; they do not use the word “former” next to the names of deputies of the Artsakh Parliament, heads of communities, HRD. Davit Sargsyan is still the mayor of Stepanakert, Hayk Shamiryan is the mayor of Askeran, Artsakh diocese is opening an office in Yerevan.
To this hopeless optimism of the people of Artsakh, the government opposes the term “real Armenia”: Armenia without Artsakh, without Kirants, without enclaves, a new, small country, the size and degree of smallness of which are not yet clear.
Nikol Pashinyan announced the number of 29,743 square meters {of Armenia] from the podium of the Parliament and admitted that two years before the war, he actually knew that we would give Artsakh.
“I blame myself a lot for that: I should have come to the National Assembly and said in closed session that we should agree that Nagorno Karabakh should be part of Azerbaijan. There should be not only Armenian, but also Azeri joint governance. And the limit of our concessions should be our 29,743 square kilometers,” Pashinyan said on June 12, 2024.
He has not pronounced the word Artsakh for a long time: he replaced it with the term Nagorno Karabakh.
Addressing his political opponents from the podium of the Parliament about the people of Artsakh, he says: “You needed the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to maintain your power after 1998. Today you brought them as demonstration material to bring them to demonstrations for 5,000 drams [means that the demonstrators participate for getting ∞≤ººº drams bribes].”
For Pashinyan, the Artsakh elite in Baku prisons are “coward deserters” who are guilty of the depopulation of Nagorno Karabakh.
On June 12, during a question-and-answer session with the government, Pashinyan announced: “The cowardly deserters, all the cowardly deserters, should be put in prisons and spend many years in prisons, and that is a matter of the dignity of the Republic of Armenia. Cowardly deserters.”
He also made insulting remarks to Artsakh people, saying: “Those who were sending messages through journalists from Nagorno-Karabakh at my press conferences, saying that the people of Nagorno-Karabakh are heroic and will stand to the end and will not concede anything, exactly two hours before the start of the operation by Azerbaijan, they called me trembling and said ‘do something; we need to run away from here.’” The Prime Minister, shaking his hands in the air, was immitating “the cowards” from the National Assembly podium.
The people of Artsakh though blame Pashinyan.
“Our homeland was taken away from us,” we hear from many. “They took away our sons from us,” protest Armenians on their social networks. These days, we often hear similar conversations, and they reveal the growing intolerance towards the people of Artsakh.
“In the beginning, there was care, interest, everyone wanted to cover the topic, and we wanted to present it to the world, on different forums… But after a few months, people asked, what did you come out [of NK]?” And you understand that they ask not to know, but to hurt you. Realizing all this, I said: ‘Allow me, as a reborn person living a second life, not to answer, because you won’t understand anyway’…” This is an excerpt from the speech of Hunan Tadevosyan, spokesperson of Artsakh State Emergency Service. He was one of the participants of the conference entitled “Self-Defense in Artsakh: September 2023” held at the Elit Plaza business center on June 27.
This discussion was the unique reaction of the people of Artsakh against targeting them and hate speech. People, participants of combat operations, experts, former statesmen, gathered and gave testimonies about the Azerbaijani invasion that took place on September 19-20, 2023, the last two days of the existence of Artsakh.
Of course, the people of Artsakh, unlike Nikol Pashinyan, express themselves correctly. What is the reason for the actively generated hatred, why has the attitude towards the people of Artsakh changed? Hunan Tadevosyan answered Forrights.am’s question:
“Recently, at the state level, politics began to be conducted against the people of Artsakh. The participation of the people of Artsakh in the struggle of Archbishop Bagrat also contributed to it. The people of Artsakh have the right to participate in it, but they tell us that you have come to our country and want to cause internal disputes. The hatred was renewed with the Archbishop’s movement. There are people who are adequate, sympathetic to your pain, sympathize with us. But there is also the opposite.”
Hunan Tadevosyan often goes out with his family. “We, of course, communicate in Artsakh dialect. Previously, they used to look at us with a smile and ask: ‘Are you from Artsakh? How can we help you?’ Now, whenever they hear the dialect, they look at us in astonishment, measure us from head to toe, and walk away talking under their breath,” he says.
A few days ago, he approached a girl who was talking under her breath and asked what she had to say. She said, “You have come to our country” “I explained to her that Armenia is as much hers as it is mine, I am 35 years old and all my life I have carried a blue Armenian passport with the inscription: Republic of Armenia, place of birth: Stepanakert. But she didn’t understand me. She said: ‘You lived with the Turks.’ I said, ‘You probably don’t know the history. There were villages inhabited by Turks in Masis region of Armenia too, and you lived with them. There were also Azerbaijani villages in Artsakh, where there was trade, but there was no coexistence with them.’ As you speak calmly, they slowly start to soften. You just can’t talk to everyone like that.”
Hunan Tadevosyan lives on rent. He does not complain about the price of the house. Appreciates the good attitude of the owner of the house towards his family. The owner of the house gave the keys to Hunan and told him to live here without paying.
Syuzan Simonyan