2024-04-25 04:21:56
There is a difficult situation in the region. Armenia has a hostile neighbor in the form of Azerbaijan, with its aggressions and ethnically motivated crimes against Armenians, Rupa Haq from the Labor Party said this during the discussion in the United Kingdom Parliament entitled “International support for refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh”.
He noted that during his visit to Armenia in February, he met the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the National Assembly, representatives of the opposition and the government, but the most memorable was the visit to Jermuk.
“The atrocities we have seen – the destruction of churches and crosses and the attempt to completely erase Armenian culture by renaming cities and towns – are sickening. Four soldiers were killed during our visit. The most memorable aspect of our visit was the refugees we saw. We heard terrible stories of human suffering who fled to Armenia on foot due to lack of fuel. We heard about the sadistic actions of the Russian soldiers with their black market boiling sweets and all sorts of horrible things. We talked with the mayor and governor of Jermuk. Generations of these people have been traumatized, but they have integrated well and are grateful for what the municipality has done,” said Haq.
The MP emphasized that their voice should be stronger in Armenia.
“In this House in 2020, we discussed the blockade of Lachine Corridor, but our weak response emboldened those actions. This was completely predictable years ago.
It was mentioned that Armenia has an old elite that came out of the Velvet Revolution, which is turning away from the Russian influence, I think it is correct to call it an axis moving away from the Kremlin. The EU granted candidate status to Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, but Armenia did not have such a privilege.
We promised that we will use our voice to raise the plight of Armenians. We laid flowers at the National Genocide Memorial, and again the very fact that there is a National Genocide Memorial is significant. The Ealing region has long commemorated the 1915 Armenian Genocide. We have an apricot tree in Ealing Green, which was retrofitted as a more permanent monument this September, but it has already been vandalized, allegedly by the Turkish Gray Wolves group, who staged a protest. I called on this government to recognize 1915 as a genocide. Our closest ally, Biden, has done it, but there has been no support from our government. This timidity, this vacuum, encourages these actions in Azerbaijan, which recently had an election whose outcome was completely predictable, like the one in Russia this weekend.
What is our government doing? Regarding the role of British Petroleum, I would like to ask the minister how much oil is pulling the strings of this relationship. People observing the elections in Baku said that they could smell oil when they landed, it was all about oil. Ironically, COP29 will be held in Baku.
I pay tribute to my Armenian communities and want to pressure the government for help. Could there be a “Homes for Ukraine” type scheme for refugees from Nagorno Karabakh? Finally, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh want to return to their land, the places where they lived for thousands of years, although we see attempts to erase territories like Artsakh from the map. Although the eyes of the world may be elsewhere, we must be consistent in our principles. Regarding Ukraine, we say that self-determination is right and destruction is wrong, so why can’t we consistently apply the same principles here?