Whenever someone speaks about the rights of the people of Artsakh, the authorities immediately “turn the issue upside down” and say that at this moment we have no possibility of sending our compatriots back to their ancestral homes. In other words, they pretend that someone is proposing exactly that. In reality, the issue is not about returning today, but about preserving the right itself.
Japan is not planning, at this point, to attack Russia in order to regain the two Kuril Islands—but it has not renounced them either. I can give a more recent and closer example. The Georgian government, which the EU considers “pro-Russian,” in fact regularly states that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are territories occupied by Russia. This does not mean that Georgia today has diplomatic, let alone military, capabilities to reclaim those territories. But Georgia preserves its right—and does not sprawl like a rag at Russia’s feet, or, incidentally, at the feet of that same EU.
I believe that when this government leaves (sooner or later that will happen, won’t it?), the new government will be genuinely peace-loving, as well as prudent and dignified. Our diplomats and lawyers will have enormous work to do once they are given a clear political mandate. This concerns the crimes committed by the Azerbaijani army, the deliberate destruction of Armenian spiritual and cultural heritage, forced displacement, and, of course, prisoners of war.
For now, Pashinyan takes great pleasure in the fact that his potential political rivals are in Baku prisons. In a broad sense, they are being tried for participation in self-defense. And that is precisely one of the reasons why Armenia’s official propaganda is trying to convince citizens that self-defense since 1988 was a mistake. By that logic, it turns out that Armenians should have allowed Azerbaijanis to slaughter and torture unarmed Armenians, as they did in Sumgait and Baku.
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This immoral propaganda will end when this government leaves.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
