“Stop the slaughter of children,” “Mothers are waiting for their sons,” a group of citizens protested in front of the government building on January 13 with such posters. They also wrote on the posters, “The CSTO is not only for Kazakhstan.”
The anger of the citizens was caused by the situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border on January 11, as a result of which three servicemen were killed.
According to Isabella Sargsyan, it can not continue like this- all this must end. “As citizens, we demand that the government make every effort to put an end to this issue. Why do people come to power, come to solve problems. If they can not solve the problems, then they can not do it. In general, people should not die, civilians should not die, we should set a task to solve this issue, that’s all.”
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According to human rights activist Zaruhi Hovhannisyan, a major army reform is needed. “After the war, the government did not allow the people to return to a normal life. When they have to send troops to Kazakhstan, they find a quick way, so let them find a way to protect the life of their citizens. This is a state that is able to provide the cemeteries with normal equipment, and the children do the border engineering work by hand. That’s not normal.”
According to human rights activist Nina Karapetyants, peace cannot be a false thesis, there is no reasonable person who is against peace. “Peace is inevitable, the question is how reasonable our steps are. To what extent are actions taken for the sake of the Republic of Armenia? A year later, it is clear to us that the mechanisms that are being proposed are not working and we are constantly having new victims and new losses. We need to think about making new proposals, developing new mechanisms.”
According to Nina Karapetyants, the solution to this situation can be the involvement of peacekeeping forces in this region. “We can include monitoring groups. What we are offered does not work. Russian peacekeepers do not solve our problem. We do not receive a response from either the CSTO or Russia. There should be international monitoring groups and international peacekeeping forces that will at least restrain Azerbaijan’s aggression.
The international community has that opportunity to solve the problem with one call. There is no leader who, even if they are a dictator on a global scale, does not have that opportunity, for example, to reject the US president. They do not have the opportunity to reject the whole staff from the EU.”
Lusine BUDAGHYAN
