Portraits of Erasure: The Ethnic Cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh

Two Artsakhtsis displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh in Goris, Armenia with the few possessions they managed to bring with them. | Credit: Anoush Baghdassarian.

One year ago this month, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive into the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh which led to the total ethnic cleansing of over 100,000 ethnic Armenians in just one week. Until September 2023, Nagorno-Karabakh was overwhelmingly ethnic Armenian, self-governing as a de facto state that had declared independence from Azerbaijan in 1991.

From September 26-29, 2023, Anoush Baghdassarian, field researcher for the University Network for Human Rights, documented the experiences of refugees streaming into Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh. The photos and testimonies gathered along the border bore witness to the final stage of Azerbaijan’s years-long campaign to empty Nagorno-Karabakh of its Indigenous Armenian population.

The world must hear these stories, particularly now as Azerbaijan assumes the global spotlight. In two months, world leaders will convene in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, for the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29). As those expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh remain in exile, Armenia and Azerbaijan now negotiate a peace treaty¹ that could require Armenia to withdraw² its cases against Azerbaijan from international courts. Azerbaijan has yet to face any meaningful consequences for the atrocities it committed. Meanwhile, the rights of the people captured in these images—along with over 150,000³ others—remain unaddressed and unrestored.

Amid the September 2023 military assault on Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani authorities vowed to fight “until the end”⁴ unless local Karabakh officials surrendered. Once Azerbaijani soldiers entered the villages, many residents had just 30 minutes to pack what they could and flee. Two sisters interviewed by UNHR recounted their escape on September 19, 2023: “There was no other choice. We weren’t able to take clothes, grabbed only our documents and ran away. . . . There were cars carrying 50 to 60 children.”⁵ 

Within 24 hours, the leadership of the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh Republic capitulated. Soon after, its president signed a decree to dissolve “all state institutions and organizations under their departmental authority.”⁶ 

Stuck in a 50-mile traffic jam visible from space, families were stranded for up to 40 hours⁷ on the road to Armenia—a journey that normally takes just two hours. One mother recounted, “We were on the road for two days. . . . Our children were hungry, thirsty. . . . Stuck in the car, there was no air to breathe.”⁸

Over the course of a single week, more than 100,600 Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh. One middle-aged father recalled the experience of evacuating civilians from his village: “I was going to elderly ladies and men and seating them in my tractor, 30, 40 people. . . . People were sitting on top of each other.”⁹

A grandmother from Martakert shared the heartache of fleeing: “During the war we saw a lot of loss. . . . We left everything, but we’d rather that all those people we lost were here with us instead.”¹⁰

The forced displacement of over 100,000 Armenians marked the culmination of a prolonged campaign of systematic persecution characterized by violence, discrimination, and repeated rights violations. Azerbaijan’s efforts to erase the Armenian presence in Nagorno-Karabakh has continued over the last twelve months through operations to destroy Armenian monuments, churches, and cemeteries.¹¹ This year, Nagorno-Karabakh was rated by Freedom House as the least free¹² country or territory in the world, with a worse ranking than North Korea, Afghanistan, or Sudan. 

In 2020, Azerbaijan released a stamp depicting a man in a biohazard suit standing over a map of Azerbaijan, fumigating the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The imagery reflects a broader state-sanctioned policy of hate speech against ethnic Armenians. Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, has famously referred to ethnic Armenians as a “virus” and boasted that “Azerbaijani soldiers drive them away like dogs.”¹³ Published three years before the ethnic cleansing, the 2020 stamp stands as a chilling warning of the final chapter of forced displacement that would soon unfold. 

Nearly ten months before the ethnic cleansing, the Azerbaijani government blockaded¹⁴ the Lachin Corridor, Nagorno-Karabakh’s only passageway to Armenia and the primary entry point for humanitarian aid, on which the enclave’s populace depended. The blockade resulted in critical shortages of food, fuel, electricity, and healthcare. The UN labeled the crisis a “humanitarian emergency.”¹⁵ One affected woman described, “Every new day of the blockade [was] a life-and-death struggle.”¹⁶ 

By the time Azerbaijani munitions began falling on the regional capital of Stepanakert, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh had already endured the constant threat of starvation under blockade compounded by years¹⁷ of intimidation, arbitrary detentions, and unlawful killings. These conditions made life untenable and presented families with only one option when Azerbaijani forces took over the enclave: to flee for their lives.

Faced with impossible decisions, many families were separated during the exodus. In one case, a family was forced to leave behind their 95-year-old grandmother. The local mayor explained, “Because we had to climb through the mountains and forest to escape and we couldn’t carry the grandma, I told [the son] to leave her in the house.”¹⁸  

After arriving to safety in Armenia, a woman from Martakert expressed how she had no choice but to leave her home behind: “There was no way back. . . . They forcibly took everyone out of their homes. . . . We don’t have a place to go. We don’t have relatives to stay with here,” she said.¹⁹

Looking to the future, one displaced woman spoke with optimism, saying, “I believe I will return back to my Artsakh, my homeland, where I was born, where my father and relatives are buried.”²² Many others, meanwhile, expressed despair, “What Artsakh? Artsakh is gone. . . What international community? They don’t see us. We do not exist to them.”²³

One year ago, the international community failed to act to protect the people of Nagorno-Karabakh; indeed, it failed to act over years of escalating atrocities. Now, the world has the chance to advocate for a different path forward: a future in which, under guarantees of international protection, those forcibly displaced might return, keys in hand, and enter their homes once again.

1. https://eurasianet.org/armenia-and-azerbaijan-take-new-step-towards-finalizing-peace-deal. ↩︎
2. https://tatoyanfoundation.org/withdrawal-from-armenias-lawsuits-against-azerbaijan-in-international-instances-will-cause-irreparable-damage-to-the-republic-of-armenia-and-the-armenian-people/?lang=en. ↩︎
3. https://www.civilnet.am/en/news/768720/refugees-from-nagorno-karabakh-in-armenia-different-people-with-different-needs/. ↩︎
4. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/19/azerbaijan-forces-attack-nagorno-karabakh-as-threat-of-new-war-looms. ↩︎
5. https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/we-are-no-one. (pg. 182) ↩︎
6. https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/nk-live-monitor. ↩︎
7. https://apnews.com/article/nagorno-karabakh-%20azerbaijan-armenia-separatist-government-5f7b940643a3d6e63a6f3d512158e51a. ↩︎
8. Ibid. (pg. 191) ↩︎
9. Ibid. (pg. 183) ↩︎
10. Ibid. (pg. 196) ↩︎
11. https://indd.adobe.com/view/b1b54fc0-dce2-4eb0-ba83-eb728c49dd20. ↩︎
12. https://freedomhouse.org/country/nagorno-karabakh/freedom-world/2024. ↩︎
13. https://president.az/en/articles/view/45924. ↩︎
14. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/08/un-experts-urge-azerbaijan-lift-lachin-corridor-blockade-and-end. ↩︎
15. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/08/un-experts-urge-azerbaijan-lift-lachin-corridor-blockade-and-end. ↩︎
16. Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Artsakh, Report on the Violations of Individual and Collective Human Rights as a Result of Azerbaijan’s Blockade of Artsakh, quoting from an interview with Mariam (pg. 9). ↩︎
17. https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/we-are-no-one. ↩︎
18. Ibid. (pg. 195) ↩︎
19. Joint interview with UNHR and CFTJ, Goris, September 29, 2023. ↩︎
20. https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/we-are-no-one. (pg. 195) ↩︎
21. Ibid. (pg. 197) ↩︎
22. Ibid. (pg. 201) ↩︎
23. Ibid. (pg. 199) ↩︎

Kathryn Hemmer is a senior at Yale University studying Political Science and Human Rights. She has done advocacy and documentation work in the US, Yerevan, and Geneva as a student researcher for the University Network for Human Rights.