Armenian Weekly
July 24, 2024
By Dr. Gregory H Stanton
The genocide we can’t afford to ignore
Forced deportation of Armenians from Artsakh (Photo: Siranush Sargsyan)
Genocide, alas, has never been more popular.
Turn on the news, and you’ll hear supporters of Palestine arguing that Israel’s relentless attack on Gaza, which has flattened the narrow strip and left tens of thousands dead, is a classic case of genocide. In rebuttal, Israelis argue that Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, which left more than 1,200 dead, was a brutal act of genocide, the single worst massacre of Jews since the ovens of Auschwitz cooled.
In Darfur, Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces, the uniformed Arab Janjaweed, massacred 28,000 Massalit people in just one town, El Geneina. They now surround El Fasher, the capital of Darfur. If they take El Fasher, they’ll massacre thousands more.
I’m no expert on the complex conflict in the Middle East, which has been raging for more than three millennia. But I am an authority on genocide, having founded Genocide Watch in 1999, written the U.N. Security Council Resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1994, written the rules for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in 2006 and served as president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars in 2007-2009.
I have an urgent warning: If you truly care about justice, you must pay attention to the world’s most ignored genocide, the one being perpetrated right now by Azerbaijan against Armenians.
It’s a bitter irony that Armenians once again find themselves the victims of genocide. This year we commemorated the 109th anniversary of the first widely-recognized genocide in the 20th century, in which more than one million Armenians were slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks. Now, their descendants are again living under genocide’s dark shadow. It’s a sobering reminder of how little we’ve learned from history and how vulnerable we still are to relentless evil.
The wars in Gaza and Ukraine have dominated the headlines these last two years. It’s likely that many people haven’t even heard of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), an area claimed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, where 120,000 ethnic Armenians have been subjected to one of the most sweeping forced deportations in recent history. Azerbaijani aggressors deployed genocidal killings and persecution to drive Armenians out of their homeland of thousands of years.
It’s Azerbaijan’s systematicity that should give us pause. If you want to understand the genocidal process, and if you’re committed to stopping it wherever it occurs, you’d do well to study the genocidal campaign of Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh. Now Azerbaijan is invading Armenia itself, nibbling away at its border provinces and threatening to seize Armenia’s southernmost province altogether.
The genocide claim against Azerbaijan is based on extensive documentation of atrocities committed against ethnic Armenians, including forcible displacement, targeted killing of civilians and prisoners of war and virulent hate speech dehumanizing Armenians. President Ilham Aliyev and other Azerbaijani officials have employed a toxic rhetoric that portrays Armenians as “rats” and “dogs,” creating a culture in which genocide and persecution are not only condoned but encouraged.
In December of 2022, Azerbaijan blockaded the enclave, denying vital supplies to Armenian civilians. In an August 2023 report, Luis Moreno Ocampo, former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), described this blockade as attempted genocide, a position since backed by other leading genocide scholars and jurists.
Shortly thereafter, in September of 2023, Azerbaijan escalated its persecution by directly attacking the starving, exhausted population, causing the flight to nearby Armenia proper of all 120,000 Armenian residents. It was a massive war crime and crime against humanity.
The scale of the forced deportation and aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan should have shocked the world. They should have prompted calls for international intervention to halt Azerbaijan’s aggression and hold those responsible accountable for their crimes. But the U.N., U.S. and E.U. stood by and watched as Azerbaijan invaded and seized Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing its Armenian population to run for their lives.
The allegations of genocide against Azerbaijan carry profound implications for international law. They raise disturbing questions about the responsibility to protect civilians in times of conflict and the limits of state sovereignty in the face of genocide. They also underscore the need for a robust and effective international legal framework to address crimes of such magnitude.
An Armenian advocacy group, the California-based Center for Truth and Justice, has asked the ICC to investigate the leaders of Azerbaijan. The filing asks the ICC to initiate a preliminary examination into the genocide and crimes against humanity it believes are still being perpetrated by Azerbaijan’s armed forces against ethnic Armenians.
This appeal is based on extensive evidence documenting systematic crimes, including forcible displacement, killings of civilians and extrajudicial executions of Artsakh’s elected officials, ordered by Azerbaijan’s leadership under President Aliyev.
The ICC’s involvement in the case of Azerbaijan is crucial for several reasons. It sends a powerful message that impunity will not be tolerated and that those responsible for genocide will be held accountable for their crimes. Moreover, the ICC provides a forum for victims to seek justice and redress for the crimes committed against them. Finally, it helps to deter future genocides by demonstrating that the nations of the world are committed to upholding the principles of justice and the rule of law.
We cannot be bystanders while Armenians are again subjected to religious persecution and genocide. If we take genocide seriously — not as an empty accusation to lob at our foes but as a reminder that past genocides must never again be repeated — NATO, the U.S., the E.U. and the U.N. must come together to defend people who are victims of genocide.
It’s time for world leaders to demand that Azerbaijan stop its genocide and stop its invasion of Armenia.
Gregory H Stanton
Dr. Gregory Stanton is the founding president of Genocide Watch and chair of the Alliance Against Genocide. He was a research professor in Genocide Studies at George Mason University and James Farmer Professor in Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington. He is the author of The Ten Stages of Genocide. In 2007-2009, Stanton was president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.