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Dec. 19, 2023 - Epoch Times
15:21
Media Blackout As 100K Christians Forcibly Starved, Exiled From Homeland
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On October 7th of this year, Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel.
And you might remember that almost immediately after that attack, about two days later, the Israeli defense minister came out and he announced a total blockade of the entire Gaza Strip ahead of a ground invasion.
This meant that the fuel, the water and the electricity were no longer available to flow into the region.
Now, for the ordinary Gazan citizen, meaning the mother, the kid, and the husband who runs a little shop, this was a total disaster.
And internationally, we saw many news reports covering exactly that, the effect that this blockade was having on ordinary people.
However, as important as it is to cover what's happening over in Gaza, well, there's another blockade that's been ongoing for the entirety of the year, which has had no media coverage at all.
That's because, despite a near total media blackout, over in the Caucasus region, 120,000 Armenian Orthodox Christians have been under blockade by their Muslim neighbors for pretty much the entirety of the year 2023.
Specifically, For nine full months, these Armenian Christians were being quite literally starved to death by a blockade that was imposed on them by their neighbors, the government of Azerbaijan.
The area where these Christians were blockaded was this right here, the Nagorno-Karabakh region, or as the Armenians call it, the Artsakh region.
This is where tens of thousands of families were trapped and starved until finally, in September of this year, they accepted exile from their homeland and they fled across the mountains to escape persecution.
Now, while we here in the West might look at what's happening over in Armenia as being completely separate from what's happening over in Israel, It's really worth mentioning that that's not how the Muslim nations see it.
For many Muslim leaders, this is all part of a broader conflict between the forces of the West, being specifically Christendom and Judaism, versus the Islamic forces of the Middle East.
Here is an excerpt from a speech that was given by President Erdogan of Turkey, and it was given just four weeks ago, about a month ago.
And notice how during the speech, even though he's discussing what's taking place over in Gaza, he includes a reference to what's currently taking place over in Armenia, when he specifically mentions the Christians over in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Take care.
Ukrayna'da ölenler için gözyaşı döktünüz de, Gazze'de ölen bu yavrular için niçin sesiniz çıkmıyor? - Ey Batı!
Size sesleniyorum!
Siz yeniden bir Hilal Haçlı mücadelesi mi estirmek istiyorsunuz?
Eğer böyle bir gayretin içerisindeyseniz You know that this people are not dead.
This people are in the middle of the hill.
And again, in the same way, in the same responsibility, who are we in Libya, who are we in Karabağ, who are we in the Middle East.
And so you see, the Crusader-Crescent War that he's talking about is an obvious reference to the Christian Crusaders versus the crescent symbol of Islam.
And he very obviously included what's currently happening in Azerbaijan as just one example of that broader conflict, one battle in a larger war.
And so with that as the general context, let me give you a brief history of what's taking place currently in Armenia.
Armenia is the oldest Christian nation on earth.
They were the first to adopt Christianity as their official religion all the way back in the year 301 AD. And as such, they have some of the oldest Christian churches and Christian artifacts in the whole world.
Quote, Armenians built thousands of churches, monasteries, schools, and scriptoria, which produced beautifully illuminated manuscripts.
Because Armenia was a crossroads between Europe and Asia, the land suffered from wars and invasions, with the most significant being the Muslim conquest of the 7th and 8th centuries.
Even then, the Armenians managed to practice their faith, surviving all these assaults on their traditions.
Then the 20th century arrived.
From 1915 to 1922, the Armenian genocide and the destruction of many buildings and artifacts wiped out much of Armenian culture and religious practices.
Later, in those areas under the thumb of the Soviet Union, authorities clammed down on Armenian Christianity, imprisoned some priests, and closed many of the remaining churches, allowing them to fall into disrepair.
All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment.
In my research, I also found that Stalin, in order to lessen the resistance of these Christians in Armenia, he specifically drew the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan in a way that did not reflect the reality on the ground in order to essentially inflame ethnic tension and The result is what happened next.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought new conflicts to the region.
The Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh held a referendum and declared that tiny country an independent state, breaking away from Azerbaijan.
A bloody war ensued, leaving the Armenians in control of the region and holding parts of Azerbaijan.
That region that broke away became known as the Artsakh Republic.
And so that was a very, very, very simplified version of 1700 years of history.
But relevant to our discussion, this all culminated in the 2023 map of that region looking like this, where you had the Artsakh Republic connected to the Armenian mainland by a very, very, very narrow passage.
Basically, that narrow mountain road was the lifeline for the Orthodox Christian Armenians who were living inside this enclave within the borders of Azerbaijan.
And as such, internationally, it was considered a humanitarian corridor.
In fact, Russian troops were stationed there to maintain peace.
However, with the outbreak of the Ukraine-Russia war, well, the government of Azerbaijan, they saw this as their opportunity and they began a series of escalating attacks.
In January of this year, Azerbaijani soldiers, claiming themselves to be environmental activists, they blocked the corridor that was connecting Artsakh to Armenia.
And then, in April of this year, just four months later, they essentially dropped the environmental facade and they completely seized the territory of the humanitarian corridor.
And in so doing, they completely isolated the Armenians who were living inside the enclave.
This blockade, it stopped all trucks, including all Red Cross trucks, from being able to bring humanitarian aid to the region.
And in effect, they completely trapped the 120,000 ethnic Armenians, including 30,000 children, in this one small area.
The Azerbaijanis, they then began to sabotage civilian infrastructure within Artsakh, which completely destroyed the ability of the Armenians who were living in that area to access food, gas, electricity, and even the internet.
The ultimate intent of their plan appeared to have been to make the living conditions in this area so unbearable that the people there will just be forced to leave.
And it was successful, with the state of affairs becoming so dire that the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court described this blockade as potentially constituting a form of genocide of Christian Armenians.
Specifically, he released a report in August of this year claiming why the conflict should be considered a form of genocide.
His argument was that this blockade was, quote, However, the story gets a lot deeper, which we'll get into right after I introduce today's sponsor by showing you this little piece of money.
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Now, Azerbaijan's director of foreign policy, he came out and he called that report biased, saying that it, quote, distorted the real situation on the ground.
However, videos and photos from the blockade, well, they painted a much different picture.
Throughout the majority of this year, you had photos like these coming out from the region, showing absolutely bare shelves across all of Artsakh.
In fact, The Guardian newspaper, they were able to get an interview with an Armenian resident inside of this region, and here's how she described the situation.
Because we have only one water reservoir which is used right now to produce electricity and it's not enough.
So right now we have also water shortages.
And because of the water shortages and electricity shortages and no gas, the bakeries don't work.
So there is not enough bread.
There are barely any cars left in the whole territory of Artsakh.
And that's why we don't even have like opportunity to bring vegetables and fruits from the villages.
And indeed, people began to die of starvation.
Miscarriages in the area tripled largely due to malnutrition.
And by July, the economy had collapsed with a barter system springing up where people would use food as a form of currency.
Now, politically, there was some fairly empty rhetoric coming from the West, from both Europe as well as America.
For instance, the European Union, they put out a statement, this one right here, condemning the blockade.
But that statement really had no teeth, evidenced by the fact that the European Union had also signed billions of dollars worth of gas and investment deals with Azerbaijan in order to diversify away from Russia because of the Ukraine-Russia war.
And so realistically, the European Union was not really about to do anything.
And then, here in America, you had a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department.
He took to the podium and he said the following, quote, I want to be especially clear that any disruption to energy infrastructure could precipitate a humanitarian crisis, especially as we're entering the winter months.
If deliberate, it's unacceptable to target the civilian population of Artsakh.
However, these condemnations had little to no effect.
That's because in September, after nine full months of this blockade had softened Artsakh's defenses and crushed the morale of the people, well, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military offensive.
They did this, of course, under the guise of conducting local anti-terrorist activities, but realistically, they were just annexing the region.
And just as a fun fact, the nation of Turkey has been supplying Azerbaijan with weapons, training, and actually just one month before the beginning of this blockade, a Turkish general became an advisor to Azerbaijan's defense minister.
And so Turkey has been fully engaged in this crusader crescent war, as they call it.
Now again, shortly after these open hostilities broke out, the U.S. State Department, they once again came out with another statement with Anthony Blinken saying the following, quote,"...the United States is deeply concerned by Azerbaijan's military actions in Artsakh and calls on Azerbaijan to seize these actions immediately.
These actions are worsening an already dire humanitarian situation in Artsakh and undermine prospects for peace.
As we have previously made clear to Azerbaijan, the use of force to resolve disputes is unacceptable and runs counter to efforts to create conditions for a just and dignified peace in the region." We call for an immediate end to hostilities and for respectful dialogue between Baku, which is the capital of Azerbaijan, and representatives of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, Artsakh.
However, realistically, the Artsakh region doesn't really have much in way of natural resources, in gas reserves, there's really no investment opportunities there, and by and large, U.S. foreign policies already stretch pretty thin dealing with all these other conflicts around the globe, meaning that the U.S. statement was about as impactful as the paper it was written on.
And so, you see, there was just a perfect storm, a perfect confluence of events for this invasion.
You had the Ukraine-Russia war sap the attention of Russia, making them unable to act as peacekeepers in the region.
You had the European Union needing to diversify their gas and energy sources, and so they signed some fat contracts with Azerbaijan, making them a lot less likely to do anything.
The government of Turkey is out there providing trainings and weapons in their Crusader Crescent War plan.
Probably Iran is doing the same thing behind the scenes.
The government of Armenia chose to do nothing, probably fearing a broader conflict in the region.
And all the while, the media, both in our country and around the world, has developed a strange habit of failing to report on any persecution that suffered against Christians.
All these factors, they coalesced into a perfect storm, and they brought about this invasion.
Now, this war did not last long.
Perhaps as a result of this nine-month-long starvation blockade, the Artsakh forces, they suffered 400 wounded and 200 killed in a single day.
And on September the 20th, one day after the initial offensive, Artsakh surrendered control of the region.
The president of Azerbaijan, he subsequently went on TV and announced his victory.
And then, within about a week, 85 to 90 percent of the Christian Armenian population was forcibly displaced, fleeing their homes, fearing persecution, and subsequently creating a massive refugee crisis in the region.
Now again, this whole episode is not to diminish the human tragedy that's happening in other parts of the world.
But, for one, I think it's important for people to have a record of what is taking place and what took place over in Armenia.
And second of all, this is a good case study in how the mainstream legacy news outlets choose what is and what isn't newsworthy.
This blockade has been taking place throughout the whole year.
These Christians have been starved to death.
They've been denied electricity.
They've been denied gas and fuel.
They've literally been ejected from their homeland.
But for one reason or another, there has been little to no coverage of it here in the West.
Makes you wonder why.
If you'd like to learn more about this conflict, which there's a lot more to go into, obviously this episode was very condensed, there's a lot more to this conflict going back centuries, I'll throw several research links, including all my research notes, they'll be down in the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure, and all I ask in return is that as you're making your way down there to the description box, take a small detour to smash those like and subscribe buttons.
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