CANBERRA: Member of North Sydney, Trent Zimmerman MP has delivered an impassioned plea in Australia’s Federal Parliament for the international community “not to sit back and hope that the parties will themselves come together but to actively intervene and tell the Azerbaijanis that their actions today simply are unacceptable”, reported the Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU).
The co-convenor of the Australia-Armenia Inter-Parliamentary Union (Friendship Group) used an adjournment address in the Federation Chamber to deliver his assessment on Azerbaijan’s Turkey-backed attacks on the Armenian Republics of Artsakh and Armenia, which began on 27th September and continue to today.
Zimmerman called out Baku’s autocratic regime of Ilham Aliyev for the aggression that has led to the biggest outbreak of the Armenia-Artsakh-Azerbaijan War since the internationally-brokered ceasefire in 1994.
“The most important reason why Australians should care about this conflict in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, is that we know that if the Azerbaijani government prevails, the world will witness ethnic cleansing, which will put the livelihoods and, in fact, the lives of hundreds of thousands of residents in Nagorno-Karabakh at threat,” he said.
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“There can be no doubt that these actions, which have been long foreshadowed by the President of Azerbaijan, have one goal in mind—that is, to see every person of Armenian heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, forced from their homes, forced from their traditional lands and forced out of that country, one way or the other.”
Zimmerman added: “The international community must get involved. It must put pressure on the Azerbaijani government to stop its activities. Of course, they say in war the first loss is that of truth, but the reality is that Armenia had nothing to gain and a hell of a lot to lose by military action against Azerbaijan. So I, therefore, respectfully suggest that this conflict is the result of Azerbaijani actions. It has, as I said earlier, long been the goal of the Azerbaijani president to reclaim by force these territories.”
The Chair of the Australian Parliament’s House of Representatives Committee on Health, Sport & Ageing then turned his attention on the dictatorship of Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who has assisted self-confessed “two states, one nation” partner Azerbaijan through the deployment of Ankara-backed Islamist jihadist mercenaries from Syria and air support.
“What particularly concerns me is that we have seen other players get involved, particularly the Turkish government and its allies within its community. That has seen, at best, the Turkish government provide moral support for Azerbaijani actions. At worst, there is growing evidence that we are actually seeing Turkish interests supporting the military operations that are underway, potentially including the use of mercenaries from Syria,” he said.
Zimmerman also called on the international community to stop providing military equipment to Azerbaijan.
“We must also be ensuring that the international community is either directly or indirectly not providing military equipment to the Azerbaijani forces to continue to fight the Armenians in the way that they have,” he said.
Zimmerman, who visited Armenia as part of ANC-AU’s first delegation to Armenia, added: “We have to ensure that further loss of life is prevented and that we don’t see another tragedy emerge in this very difficult part of the world. The Armenians, over the last century-and-a-half, have already suffered a great deal. We must prevent that at every cost from happening again.”
Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU), Haig Kayserian thanked Zimmerman for his powerful statement.
“The Armenian-Australian community are living through traumatic, sleepless times, waiting for news of the next cluster bomb attack on our brothers and sisters in the country of our origin,” Kayserian said. “Mr. Zimmerman’s powerful words, calling the attackers out as Azerbaijan and Turkey out as criminal Baku’s criminal sponsors, is appreciated and brings important attention to an unfolding humanitarian disaster.”
Last week, a statement from Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne expressed “concern” at the “renewed fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan around the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh”, which the Armenian-Australian community said was “disappointing”.
“Australia should not be on the wrong side of history on this issue,” Kayserian told The Guardian on Tuesday. “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.”
Armenian National Committee of Australia