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On January 30, during the hearings of the “Armenia vs. Azerbaijan” case at the UN International Court of Justice, Azerbaijan’s representative Elnur Mammadov called Armenia’s statement about Azerbaijan’s blocking of the Lachin Corridor a “baseless accusation.”
It is not the first time that representatives of Azerbaijan have claimed that the Goris-Stepanakert road is open.
A group of Azerbaijanis presenting themselves as eco-activists and affiliated with the authorities of Azerbaijan have blocked the Lachin Corridor since December 12, 2022 by placing tents there. With that action, Azerbaijan violated the clause 6 of the tripartite statement of November 9, 2020, according to which “the Republic of Azerbaijan shall guarantee the safe movement of citizens, vehicles and cargo in both directions along the Lachin Corridor.”
Fact Investigation Platform has repeatedly addressed these claims.
“The current regime on the Lachine Corridor is the same as before the protests”
Mammadov claimed that the statements of the RA representatives that the Lachin Corridor is blocked are false. “The current regime on Lachine Road is the same as it was before the protests.”
According to him, the protesters do not impede the movement of cars on the road, and dozens of cars and trucks pass by the site of the protest on daily basis. Mammadov claimed that there was no violence or confrontation between Azerbaijani protesters and people using the road. Referring to the incident when the Azerbaijani protesters stormed the bus transporting a group of Armenian children to Stepanakert and terrorized the minors, the representative of Azerbaijan insisted that RA cannot substantiate this claim in any way, and the Azerbaijani demonstrations are peaceful.
Elnur Mammadov actually distorts the facts and manipulates.
Since December 12, movement to Stepanakert has been blocked. Only sporadic travels take place in that direction, and they are exclusively accompanied either by the International Committee of the Red Cross or the Russian peacekeeping contingent.
Despite the humanitarian crisis and the lack of food and medicine, cargo transportation is also halted. For instance, about 100 tons of humanitarian cargo of the Armenia Fund has not been reaching Artsakh for weeks due to the obstruction by the Azerbaijani side.
Before the blockade of the Corridor, 400 tons of food and medicine were being transported from Armenia to Artsakh every day, while during the 45 days of the ongoing blockade, only a few dozen humanitarian cargoes have passed through the Corridor and that exclusively accompanied by the International Committee of the Red Cross or Russian peacekeepers.
You can read about the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh here.
As for Mammadov’s claim that Armenia cannot substantiate the statement about terrorizing children going to Stepanakert by bus, he is manipulating here too.
On January 18, in the blocked section of the Corridor, Azerbaijani “eco-activists” stormed the bus transporting Artsakh children who had been deprived of the opportunity to return home for more than a month, accompanied by Russian peacekeepers, and filmed the minors, as a result of which the children were terrorized, one of them fainted.
Thus, the representative of Azerbaijan repeated the false theses at the Hague court circulated by Baku since the blocking of the Lachin Corridor that had been repeatedly refuted.
Lusine Voskanyan
