Yerevan /Mediamax/. On the evening of July 24, Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan held an urgent online press conference for international and diaspora journalists tp present the situation in Artsakh.

Here are some extracts from his speech:

Azerbaijan’s goals

Through the blockade of Artsakh, Azerbaijan pursues a number of goals: to get rid of the people of Artsakh, carry out a complete ethnic cleansing of Artsakh, closing the page of the conflict by force, to subjugate the people of Artsakh by force, to destroy Artsakh and its resistance systems, to make the people of Artsakh emigrate, to ruin the economy, to get an additional means of pressure on Armenia  for obtaining an extraterritorial road between Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan through the territory of Armenia.

The point of irreversibility

As a result of the blockade, today we are in the conditions of a humanitarian disaster, which is manifested in all spheres of life. Human deaths are already recorded as a direct and indirect result of the blockade, from newborn children to elderly patients.

Azerbaijan deliberately creates such living conditions to completely destroy the people of Artsakh. International law qualifies such a policy as genocide and obliges all states to take steps to prevent the crime of genocide.

Artsakh has always been open

The Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict should be settled through negotiations. Artsakh has always been open to negotiations with Azerbaijan to achieve a balanced, fair and dignified settlement of the conflict. The negotiations should be held within the framework of an agreed international format endowed with an appropriate mandate. This will allow ensuring the active participation of the international community in the negotiation process and its legitimacy.

One of the key issues of the peace process was and continues to be the issue of the status of Artsakh, which, from the point of view of international law, remains unresolved. Our people’s right to self-determination and the need to prevent genocide provide an indisputable basis for securing and recognizing external self-determination based on the concept of “secession for salvation”. That principle was crucial in 1991, when the councils of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and the Shahumyan region declared the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic on the basis of international law and USSR legislation.

Artsakh: a disaster zone

Taking into account the current grave situation and the growing threats to the physical existence of our people, today I declare Artsakh a disaster zone, expecting an urgent international response and political and humanitarian support from the international community in collective and individual form.

Artsakh is now the only area in the world that is in complete isolation and siege, without any humanitarian aid and international presence. Even if there is no urgent international support after Artsakh is declared a disaster zone, it can be considered a concentration camp with all its consequences.

Operate UN system without hesitation

We have demands from the parties of the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020 and especially from Russia, to fulfill the obligations as the security guarantor, and especially from Armenia to refrain from making any statements and actions recognizing Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan. We demand from Armenia to respect the right of Artsakh people to self-determination.

I demand from the Secretary General of the United Nations to demonstrate moral and political responsibility to warn the international community about the plight of the people of Artsakh.

I demand that Mr. Guterres immediately and without hesitation operate the UN system to solve this crisis.