CANBERRA: On Wednesday 7th October 2020, a group of members of the Armenian Youth Federation of Australia (AYF-AU) protested Australia’s response to Azerbaijan’s attacks on Armenia and Artsakh outside the prestigious National Press Club, reported the Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU).
A day after around 500 Armenian-Australians demonstrated at the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Canberra against dictator Ilham Aliyev’s aggression against Armenians, members of AYF-AU gathered at the National Press Club for the arrival of many of the Federal Australian parliamentary press gallery’s journalists, who were attending the traditional post-budget speech delivered by Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg.
On what is one of the most notable events on the Australian media calendar, the young Armenians’ mouths were taped signifying the unacceptable fence-sitting – surmounting to silence – from the Australian Government and many in the Australian media about what have been overt attacks by Azerbaijan’s Turkey-backed forces against the indigenous Armenians of the self-determined Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh).
Their placards made clear that Azerbaijan’s Aliyev and Turkey’s Erdogan regimes are guilty of criminal attacks, not a war that randomly broke out by “both sides of the conflict” as many have claimed, during what was a peaceful, silent demonstration.
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“Australia should not be on the wrong side of history on this issue,” said ANC-AU Executive Director Haig Kayserian. “Failing to call out the attack which instigated the ensuing violence emboldens the dictatorship of Ilham Aliyev in Azerbaijan to continue inciting Armenophobic war crimes against Armenia and Artsakh.”
“We call upon the Australian Government to call crimes by name, and this was an attack by Azerbaijan backed by Turkey, who have supported with high-level weaponry and the deployment of Islamist jihadists previously fighting in Syria.”
The AYF-AU members asked journalists to scan a QR code, which contained an information package featuring the demands of the Armenian-Australian community, urging them to hold the government to account.