The plight of Artsakh Christians and their dream to return home: ‘Forgotten by everyone’ Ethnic cleansing survivors feel left behind in Armenian peace deal

YEREVAN, Armenia — Born and raised in her ancient Christian homeland of Artsakh (known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh), 34-year-old legal professional and human rights advocate Marina Simonyan has spent her entire life under the shadow of violence and conflict, living through three different wars.

Like many from the Republic of Artsakh, which was a predominantly Armenian autonomous region within the internationally recognized borders of Muslim-majority Azerbaijan, speaking about the horrors of what happened leading up to and during the September 2023 invasion by Azerbaijan that forced over 120,000 people to flee is not easy. But these are stories that she feels the world must hear, as her people struggle to start new lives as refugees in Armenia proper.

“I was born in the 1990s, and when my parents were telling me what happened during the ’90s, I was skeptical. I was telling them, ‘Well, we are living in the 21st century, and it is highly unlikely that something like that will happen again,'” Simonyan told reporters gathered for a September witness testimony event organized by the advocacy organizations Save Armenia and the Center for Truth and Justice, admitting that her assumption proved to be incorrect.

“As a member of the fact-finding team, I have seen and I witnessed situations that one could not imagine, even in their worst nightmare. … What we witnessed, what actually happened, it was just Azerbaijan going on the offensive against the peaceful civilians. It’s not just a story, but it is a record, well noted by the Human Rights Defenders Office. They would go into the villages, torture people, rape women.”

She cited the example of one family in which elderly civilians were dismembered by Azerbaijani soldiers who broke into their house. Ears, tongues and necks were cut and mutilated, she recalled, saying there were “multiple cases like this.”

Although recollections like this are difficult to tell, Simonyan believes it’s essential that the brutal realities of what her people were subject to not be forgotten by the international community, as the cultural erasure of one of the world’s most ancient Christian homelands has received scant attention in the last two years, drowned out by other global crises.

Leaders with the Artsakh government-in-exile are also voicing their displeasure in the wake of the Aug. 8 peace agreement and memorandum of understanding between Armenia and Azerbaijan brokered by President Donald Trump at the White House, feeling the terms leave the people of Artsakh behind and solidify the injustices carried out against them under the leadership of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s regime.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have disputed control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region since the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. After a 44-day war with Azerbaijan in 2020, 70% of Artsakh territory came under Azerbaijan’s control. Beginning in December 2022, Azerbaijan starved and deprived the other 30% of Artsakh through a 10-month military blockade before ultimately taking complete control of the territory in September 2023.

During the blockade, Simonyan said civilian populations were cut off from food, hot water, gasoline and electricity. Kids were forced to walk to school in the freezing temperatures. Residents resorted to mixing water with soil to make salt. There were significant problems for pregnant women during this time due to the lack of gasoline and food. She said pregnant mothers were forced to walk miles to get to the hospital, and many faced vitamin deficiencies, causing them to lose their babies.

The Human Rights Defenders Office took note of several people who starved to death during this period, while Azerbaijani forces shelled and bombed civilian populations, apologizing to Russian peacekeepers for killing civilians in front of them, she stated.

“Despite all those struggles, we thought we would be strong until the end,” she said, adding that the Artsakh Armenians had no intention of leaving their homeland. “During the blockade, I was telling them nothing worse could happen. But we saw that it could be worse.”

‘We had to leave our homeland’

Azerbaijan’s offensive began in the region’s capital, Stepanakert, on Sept. 19, 2023, around 1 p.m., a time that children were in school and the communication service was down, Simonyan detailed. Parents frantically tried to call to see where their children were, and one child suffered a stroke, she added.

“From my office, I saw the smoke and fog and shooting. There was this promise that they would give us three months for us to collect our belongings. But it was a sudden offensive,” Simonyan said. “Every day, we would visit the hospitals, morgues. Day by day, the number of injured and tortured would increase. I can never forget that there were so many bodies, that some bodies were left on the floor.”

“Because people know what the modus operandi is of Azerbaijanis — they saw it during 2020 — we had this understanding of what will happen to us if we remain.” Between 2020 and 2023, she said there were also documented instances of the taking of captives, the imposition of the blockade and other serious human rights violations.

“We didn’t have any other choice. We had to leave our homeland,” she continued. “Artsakh has always been Armenia. It never was Azerbaijanis. We had to leave our history of thousands of years, everything we had, our churches, our graveyards, our history, our memory, everything. We had to leave Artsakh.”

For the mass exodus from Artsakh, the Azerbaijanis allowed the residents access to fuel kept in a military warehouse in Berkadzor through Russian peacekeepers. However, a massive explosion at the warehouse on Sept. 25, 2023, killed around 230 people and injured many more, Simonyan said.

For residents fleeing the enclave, there was only one road connecting Artsakh with Armenia. While thousands made it safely across the border into Armenia, for many, it was a trap as Azerbaijani forces blocked the Hakari bridge. While in normal conditions it would take about two hours to travel from Stepanakert to Hakari, Simonyan said during this mass exodus, it took three days.

“To be frank, it was not a road to save ourselves but a road to uncertainty,” she said. “You could expect anything from [the Azerbaijanis]. They told men to get out of their cars and to walk. There were cases when they kidnapped people. There were many cases of bullying, ridiculing; there were cases where they compelled them to put away their cross, and they would break the cross. I can share many such cases.”

“This is how we left and how we got to Armenia. Two years have passed since then,” she stated, adding that they have never adapted to the setting and are “suffering mentally because the Azerbaijanis are always sharing video content and footage from Artsakh.”

Simonyan said the house she used to live in was on one of Artsakh’s most historic streets. Since her departure, she said, footage shows how the Azerbaijanis have destroyed the entire street and are building a mosque in the place of her home. She said they are also sharing footage of how they are destroying Artsakh’s ancient churches.

A long history of persecution

Armenia, once a vast kingdom, was the first country to declare itself a Christian nation in the year 301 A.D., and it has a long history of persecution. In fact, one of the key figures who planted the seeds for the birth of this Christian nation, St. Gregory the Illuminator, a fourth-century apostle of Christianity, was himself imprisoned for 13 years in a burial pit before leading King Tiridates III to faith.

During World War I, up to 1.2 million Armenians were killed in massacres, individual killings and systemic mistreatment at the hands of the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey). The Armenian Genocide displaced hundreds of thousands of Armenians across the globe. Trauma from this reality still looms large amid Armenia’s current geopolitical situation, as the country has lost much territory over the decades, and there were strong fears that Azerbaijan could launch a full-scale invasion of Armenia.

For many Armenians, fears of an Azerbaijani invasion appear to have been somewhat quelled, as advocates who visited the country in previous years noticed a palpable change in the social atmosphere following news of the Aug. 8 peace agreement.

Although many details of the deal are not final and will be ironed out over the next several months or years, the deal would satisfy Azerbaijan’s demand for a 20-mile transport corridor through southern Armenia connecting Azerbaijan and Turkey that would be managed by the United States, which could give Armenia some de facto security as long as the U.S. has an economic interest in the region. However, the deal doesn’t include a right to return for Artsakh refugees nor the release of nearly two dozen Artsakh Armenians held captive in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. Additionally, many Armenians don’t trust Aliyev and Azerbaijan to uphold the agreement.

‘Forgotten by everyone’

Two years later, residents of Artsakh are living as refugees within Armenia. Although the blockade and ensuing offensive drew international news headlines and allegations of genocide at the time, leaders of the Artsakh government-in-exile, now based in an embassy building in the Armenian capital, contend that the international support for their displaced people pales in comparison to other refugee crises. Additionally, they believe their cause and push for a right to return to Artsakh is no longer supported by an Armenian government administration eager for peace.

“First of all, because of the [lack of] support coming from the government and international actors, it seems that we are forgotten by everyone just in two years,” Gegham Stepanyan, the human rights ombudsman of Artsakh, said during a meeting with representatives of U.S.-based Christian advocacy groups, media companies and policy groups organized by the nonprofit Save Armenia during a September delegation trip.

“I’m sorry to say that, but it is, it is true. I mean, yeah, we see that we are not receiving the same attention as refugees from the international community as in other contexts.”

The displaced from Artsakh received refugee status in Armenia in the fall of 2023. Although they have Armenian passports, Stepanyan said the Armenian government declared that they are not Armenian citizens but refugees, creating a special status.

Although the Armenian government and international organizations have offered some socioeconomic assistance programs, the ombudsman says the refugees have not benefited from a “proper social integration level.”

He compared the international response to the Russian invasion of neighboring Georgia in 2008, saying the U.S. government pledged to give $1 billion to help Georgians recover. But so far, he said, Armenia has received about $100 million total from the international community to support the Artsakh refugees.

“And this situation has an implication on a personal, on an individual level, for every refugee. Now I can say that there is more than 30 to 40 percent of poverty among refugees in Armenia, maybe more,” he said.

Only 20,000 Artsakh refugees are registered as workers in Armenia, and there are no specific government programs to promote their employment, Stepanyan said. While some are individually seeking and finding jobs, they are employed in low-wage roles. The average salary among refugees is 60% of the average salary in Armenia because they mostly hold low-wage jobs, he stressed.

While there is a program to assist refugees with housing, Stepanyan said the program has provisions that “are not acceptable” for many displaced from Artsakh.

“For example, it requires gaining Armenian citizenship,” he said. “And there is a concern among Artsakh people that gaining Armenian citizenship will damage our right to return. I think this is something at the social-psychological level, but international law still says that the right to return is always there. If you have property there, if it is your homeland, you are always eligible to go back. But people think that keeping this Armenian passport with the 070 code — the code of Artsakh — is the last connection. So people feel fear to give up this document.”

In recent months, more people have been applying for Armenian citizenship. Still, Stepanyan added that the financial support the government provides refugees to acquire housing is low compared to the real estate market in Armenia. Very few people have applied and are beneficiaries of this housing program, he noted.