Raise Your Voice for Armenians Under Threat
Are you in the United States?
Contact your representatives in Congress.
Tell your member in the House of Representatives to support House Resolution 5686 – Preventing Ethnic Cleansing and Atrocities in Nagorno Karabakh.
Tell your senators to support the Armenian Protection Act introduced by Senator Gary Peters of Michigan.
You can also tell them that you support ending military aid to Azerbaijan, and that you want the U.S. to support Armenia’s territorial integrity and help the victims of Azerbaijan’s genocide in Nagorno Karabakh.
Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to be connected to your representative.
You can also write to your representatives and senators, either directly or through the Armenian National Committee in America’s website.
A century after the Armenian Genocide, the first Christian nation is again under threat.
Since 2020, the oil-rich dictatorship of Azerbaijan, and its ally Turkey, have launched three genocidal wars against Armenians.
In September 2023, after a nine-month siege, Azerbaijan attacked and ethnically cleansed Nagorno Karabakh. This region had been home to 120,000 Armenian Christians ruling themselves in an independent republic – Armenians who had been living there for thousands of years.
CSI issued a Genocide Warning for Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh after Azerbaijan laid siege to the region in December 2022. The world chose to ignore this warning, and many others.
Now Turkey and Azerbaijan are targeting the rest of Armenia.
The threat:
Since 1894, Turkish Muslim powers have been carrying out a genocide of Armenian Christians in phases.
In 1915-16, during World War I, the Islamic Ottoman empire tried to wipe out the Armenian population of what is today Turkey. They killed over one million Armenians by massacring them or marching them into the desert to die.
At the end of the war, the Ottomans invaded the Caucasus region, where the modern-day Armenia lies. Their goal was to connect their empire with the Turkish Muslim peoples living farther east, in Azerbaijan and beyond.
The Armenians of the Caucasus were in the way, and the Ottomans killed hundreds of thousands of them.
The Genocide was paused when Russia conquered Armenia and Azerbaijan and incorporated them into the Soviet Union. It began again when the Soviet Union began to break apart in the late 1980s. Azerbaijan launched an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh, after they sought their independence.
The Karabakh Armenians won their independence in 1994, but Azerbaijan never gave up its goal of conquering the territory. In the decades that followed, the dictatorship of Azerbaijan grew immensely wealthy from oil profits, and invested tens of billions in weapons.
In 2020, Azerbaijan launched a new war to destroy the Karabakh Armenians. Finally, in September 2023, Azerbaijan succeeded in driving the entire Armenian Christian population of Karabakh out of their homeland, and into the Republic of Armenia.
The tiny Republic of Armenia is all that remains of an Armenian homeland that once stretched from the Mediterranean to the Caspian. And now it is under threat too.
Azerbaijan has systematically destroyed every trace of Armenians or Armenian history in all the territory it controls. Its dictator, Ilham Aliyev, regularly uses dehumanizing language to describe Armenians: “dogs,” “rats,” “humanoid creatures.” He has pledged to “drive them out of our lands.”
Turkey’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is demanding that Armenia give part of its land for a corridor connecting Turkey with Azerbaijan – the same goal that drove the Ottoman Empire’s invasion in 1918. Azerbaijan’s dictator, on the other hand, claims that all of Armenia is “our historical land,” “to which we must return.”
Azerbaijan launched a two-day war against the Republic of Armenia in September 2022. During this war, they bombed Armenian towns, drove thousands of people from their homes, and tortured and executed Armenian soldiers who they took prisoner – and then uploaded videos of this to the internet.
If Azerbaijan and Turkey attack the tiny Republic of Armenia, it could mean the end of the first Christian nation.
Armenia was the first nation to convert to Christianity, in 301 AD. In their long history, they have survived many waves of persecution. They were conquered and re-conquered by the Persian, Islamic, Turkish, and Russian empires. During World War I, the Islamic Ottoman Empire annihilated over a million Armenian Christians – an event known today as the Armenian Genocide. Under Soviet Communism, nearly every Armenian church was closed, and most of its priests were sent to the Gulag.
Through everything, the Armenians have held on to their faith and their Christian identity.
Today, a new Armenian Genocide is in the making.
Will you be silent?
Timeline
1915-1923 – The Ottoman Empire and its successor state, the Republic of Turkey, kill over a million Armenians in the Armenian Genocide. Hundreds of thousands more are enslaved, forced to convert to Islam, or driven into exile.
1918 –The Republic of Armenia declares independence. The Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh also declare their independence. The Ottoman Empire invades the Caucasus region, massacres thousands of Armenians, and helps to create the Republic of Azerbaijan.
1920 – Azerbaijani forces massacre thousands of Armenians in Karabakh. The Soviet Union conquers Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno Karabakh.
1921 – Joseph Stalin, then the Soviet Commissioner for Nationalities, redraws the borders to place Nagorno Karabakh inside Soviet Azerbaijan, against the protests of the population.
1988 – Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh begin campaigning for their freedom. Azerbaijan blockades the region and starts ethnically cleansing Armenian villages.
1991 – The Soviet Union collapses; Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Nagorno Karabakh declare their independence. Azerbaijan besieges and bombards the Armenian city of Stepanakert in Karabakh.
1992-1994 – A war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh ends in a ceasefire; Nagorno Karabakh becomes a free republic (although not recognized as independent by any other country.)
2016 – Azerbaijan launches a war to conquer Nagorno Karabakh. The Armenians drive them back, but not before the Azerbaijanis occupy the village of Talish and torture and kill several elderly Armenians there.
2020 – On September 27, Azerbaijan launches a new war to conquer Nagorno Karabakh. This new offensive lasts 44 days and kills over 7,000 soldiers on both sides. Azerbaijani forces commit numerous war crimes against the Armenians, including bombing populated civilians areas with cluster bombs and executing civilian hostages. On November 9, Russia forces a ceasefire on Azerbaijan. Under the terms of the ceasefire, Armenia cedes large areas of land to Azerbaijan, including the land connecting Armenia to Nagorno Karabakh. Tens of thousands of Armenians living in these territories evacuate their homes. The Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh are left with a single road, the Lachin corridor, connecting them to Armenia and from there to the rest of the world.
2022 – On September 13, Azerbaijan attacks the Republic of Armenia. Over the next two days, hundreds of Armenians are killed, including seven soldiers who are massacred after surrendering, and a female soldier who was raped and dismembered by Azerbaijani soldiers.
2022 – On December 12, Azerbaijan blocks the Lachin corridor, beginning a final siege of Nagorno Karabakh.
2023 – On September 19, after starving the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh for nine months, Azerbaijan launches an attack on the territory. They bomb civilian areas so intensely that over ten thousand people are forced to flee their homes. Azerbaijan’s conquest is followed by the evacuation of the entire Armenian population.
2024 – ?
Further Reading
Uzay Bulut: “Sieged and Starved: 120,000 Armenians“
Sohrab Ahmari: “Armenia’s Race for Survival“
Vicken Cheterian: “Armenia: Another Century, Another Genocide?“
Amnesty International: “Blockade of Lachin corridor putting thousands of lives in peril“
OC Media: “Life under blockade“
CBN News: “There Will Be Massacres“