Call to Action for Artsakh

Action Items (Read our statement below):

1. Stay aware

See AGBU’s Artsakh Resource page
Follow CivilNet
Follow EVN Report
Follow journalists Siranush Sargsyan and Marut Vanyan

2. Ask your representatives and the US State Department to stop military aid to Azerbaijan and to support Armenians from Artsakh & more

3. Donate to

As writers committed to using language to represent the truth, we call out Azerbaijan’s recent “military actions” for what they are – part of a years-long campaign of genocide.

On Tuesday, September 19th, Azerbaijan waged a violent assault against Armenian civilians living in the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing their mass deportation from their homeland. As of September 26th, 28,000 have entered Armenia, with most of the Artsakh population to arrive in the days and weeks ahead. Since the 44-day war in 2020, Azerbaijan has continued to attack civilians, occupy land in Armenia, and hold Armenian prisoners of war. In December 2022, Azerbaijan coordinated a blockade of the Lachin corridor, which cut off Artsakh Armenians from nearly all food, medical supplies, and fuel for nine months, causing a humanitarian crisis of malnourishment, health issues, and municipal paralysis. Such was the vulnerable state Artsakh Armenians found themselves on September 19th, when Azerbaijan waged a widescale assault of drone, air strikes, and heavy artillery. 120,000 innocent civilians, including 30,000 children, sheltered in bunkers, became separated from their families, were injured or lost their lives. Authorities in Artsakh, with their limited military defense, were forced to surrender just a day later. Reports of the dead and missing, of massacres and murders of isolated villagers, are slowly surfacing.

We also call out the lack of action by international partners to stop what Armenia, Nagorno-Karbakh, and their diasporas had been warning about for months. Luis Moreno Ocampo, former ICC prosecutor, issued analysis of the conditions and intentions of the blockade as genocide in his testimony to the US Congress. The UN Security Council considered the blockade as a crisis but issued no resolution. Repeated calls by world leaders for “both sides” to negotiate for peace – as if blockade of innocent civilians were a tool of negotiation – greenlit the September 19th attack. A week after the ceasefire, after terrorized Artsakh Armenians suffered without electricity, mobile phone service, and basic necessities, there has been almost no international humanitarian response to intervene. No sanctions, no calls to end military aid to Azerbaijan by any government. Without action, we fear Azerbaijan’s next steps in their genocidal campaign may spread to Armenia.

We call out the international media for failing to cover the crisis as it has been unfolding. Prominent news outlets such as the NY Times and The Guardian refused to report on the blockade for months, then, once bombs were dropped, framed their reporting through the Azerbaijani perspective, terming Nagorno-Karabakh as a “breakaway” or “separatist” republic. Now that indigenous Artsakh Armenians are forced to flee their home of thousands of years, in order to escape certain death by an authoritarian, genocidal government, international reporters are on the scene, shoving cameras in the faces of those they have long ignored for profitable images of ethnic cleansing. The international media, too, are complicit in genocide.

Finally, we call out social media sites such as X (formerly Twitter) which allow a hybrid war to proliferate, with Azerbaijani bots and trolls attacking the few Armenian journalists reporting from Artsakh, flooding posts with false statements and dehumanizing comments. Such a hybrid war has been underway for thirty years as Azerbaijan has restricted the free press and brainwashed its citizens with propaganda about Armenians as convenient scapegoats to distract from their own corruption: Ilham Aliyev, president for twenty years, is the son of the former President, installing his wife as wife president, the ruling family controlling the majority of Azerbaijani oil wealth. Thus the failure of social media to regulate false and hateful posts enables Azerbaijan’s intentional campaign of genocide.

Azerbaijan’s actions aren’t localized to Armenians – they are a threat the world over for their damage to truth, democracy, and human rights. Likewise, in their silences and inaction, international “partners”, the media, and social media contribute to this degradation. What government officials and international media fail to do, we will continue to call out. What they refuse to express, we will put into words. We urge you to join our calls to action – to learn, to speak out, and to donate to support Artsakh Armenians and to put a stop to Azerbaijan’s efforts at genocide.

Watch our awareness-raising event for Artsakh, Break the Silence, hosted by Peter Balakian and organized in partnership with AGBU and PEN International‘s Writers for Peace Committee, which took place on September 17, 2023.