Thank you.
Honourable Chair and distinguished members of the committee, I thank you for this opportunity to appear in this case of the blockading by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh, where Armenians, indigenous Armenians, have been calling for relief from the blockading of Artsakh.
On December 12 of last year, a group of Azerbaijanis blocked the only road connecting Artsakh with Armenia and the world. For 45 days, the lives of an estimated 120,000 people have been severely worsening. Children and adult medical patients remain in critical condition and are suffering in hospitals from a lack of supplies and treatment outside the republic. People have died as a result.
Grocery shops and markets are almost empty. The Red Cross and the peacekeepers supply a fraction of the required products and medicines. A shortage of food has led to the closure of schools and other educational institutions across the area. To elevate the suffering, the Aliyev regime has cut the supply of natural gas and sabotaged and blocked the repair of high-voltage power lines, which provide much of our electricity.
This is a humanitarian crisis caused not by an economic downturn, a global pandemic or a natural disaster. This is, rather, a political disaster. Aliyev wants to decide who can live and who must have death. It is a political disaster if, in the 21st century, we witness medieval cruelty by a repressive regime toward people whose only crime is the desire to live in freedom, democracy and dignity.
The blockade is carried out under the guise of an environmental protest. Now, the regime in Azerbaijan is regularly criticized by human rights organizations for the brutal suppression of the freedom of assembly. Additionally, international environmental agencies confirm that Azerbaijan, especially its Caspian shore, suffers from massive areas of contamination from petrochemicals and other life-threatening pollutants, yet representatives of the same country will appear and try to persuade this committee and the Canadian public that a group of activists took the liberty of closing the road in a demand for environmental accountability. Predictably, they will voice allegations of misusing the road and will even argue that there is no blockade, yet it would—