Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan has appealed to the international community, calling for sanctions to be imposed against the state of Azerbaijan.
In a statement he issued, he addressed the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group — Russia, the United States and France — as well as all members of the international community, urging them to take effective measures, jointly or individually, towards opening the road to life for Artsakh and preventing further crimes.
Official Stepanakert also urges the imposition of sanctions against all those who perpetrate and support crimes against the people of Artsakh, and against the state of Azerbaijan — including, among other measures, banning their entry into one’s own territories and freezing their movable and immovable assets located in one’s own countries.
“Azerbaijan’s attempt at ethnic cleansing of the people of Artsakh falls within the legal concept of crimes against humanity (erga omnes). Its prevention is a moral, legal and political obligation binding on all parties that have signed the Charter of the United Nations. Therefore, it is the duty of every member of the international community to do its utmost for the protection of the people of Artsakh and for their right to live with dignity in their own homeland,” reads the statement of the President of Artsakh.
Welcoming the clear calls of the executive and legislative authorities of numerous countries, as well as international organisations, for Azerbaijan to immediately and unconditionally lift the blockade, Arayik Harutyunyan stresses that “those demands and positions, however, will have little effect in the face of Azerbaijan’s fanatical and hate-filled intransigence.”
“That is why the international community must move from words to action, as it does in other regions when early warning signs of genocide are present,” the President of Artsakh said in particular.
