Armenia

As the West is distracted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, another conflict simmers in the Caucasus.

Since Azerbaijan’s aggressive war against Artsakh in 2020, considerable damage has deliberately been caused by the government of Azerbaijan against the Armenian cultural and religious heritage in Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian republic in the South Caucuses.

Tolerating the crimes by Azerbaijan is no different from tolerating crimes of ISIS. Signing deals with Azerbaijan is akin to signing deals with ISIS.

The 2021 Report of “Hate Crimes in Turkey Based on Religion, Belief or Unbelief” by the Freedom of Belief Initiative of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee documented 29 hate crimes or incidents related to religion, belief or non-belief between January and December 2021. The victims are Alevis, Christians, Jews, and atheists.

The same ideology that motivated the 1913-23 Armenian genocide motivates Turkey’s and Azerbaijan’s aggressions against Armenians, Greeks and other Christians.

The Byzantine emperor, crusaders and Armenian nobility were statesmen, not theologians: their geopolitical situations guided their decision-making more than theological considerations.

While the world’s attention is fixated on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan has escalated its aggression against the Armenian land and people of Artsakh.

The crime of cultural heritage destruction has been committed against the same victims by the same perpetrators again and again—in Turkey, Cyprus, the South Caucuses, and the Middle East.

This new edition of Baroness Cox: Eyewitness to a Broken World by Lela Gilbert shows that the international religious freedom advocate is not slowing down, and her recent ventures take several additional chapters to describe.