A prominent member of the U.K.’s House of Lords is warning the ongoing blockage in Nagorno-Karabakh, a small, landlocked region between Armenia and Azerbaijan, is sparking rampant desperation and could “indeed be an impending genocide.”
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Baroness Caroline Cox, a longtime member of Parliament, sounded the alarm on the impending crisis during an interview with CBN’s Faithwire last Thursday, explaining the dire impact the blockage of the Lachin corridor is having on the predominantly Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“It’s a continuity of aggression by Azerbaijan against Armenia,” Cox said, accusing the former of long “trying to carry out ethnic cleansing of the Armenians.”
Cox, 85, has been no stranger to such international conflicts, traveling globally and often risking her own life and safety to bring food, resources, and hope to people in need. She knows Nagorno-Karabakh intimately, having been to the region around 90 times.
“They do need prayers, because they’re in a terrible situation,” Cox said of those living in Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh.
Watch Cox’s warnings:
The most recent chaos in the region began Dec. 12, when individuals identifying as Azerbaijani protestors reportedly blocked the Lachin corridor, preventing food, medicine, and essential transport in or out of the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
“[It’s the] only road connecting Armenia with the [area],” Cox said, citing a lack of medicine, food, and fuel. “The situation is now very, very serious. It may indeed be an impending genocide.”
Cox warned that, with the cold, people could die from hypothermia, among other horrors.
The Crossbench Life peer, who has served in Parliament since 1983, shared one story about a married mother of two who is a nurse. The woman said it has become “indescribably difficult to live” and take care of her children in Nagorno-Karabakh, as the blockade stretches into its second month.
“You’re deprived of the normal conditions that every human being needs to live,” the woman said.
Cox decried Azerbaijan’s actions with the blockade as “evil.”
“To inflict such suffering gratuitously is, in my view, evil,” she said.
As Faithwire previously reported, deadly battles between Armenians and Azerbaijanis have raged for decades, and an ongoing blockade has reignited those tensions.
“The last big war in Karabakh happened in 2020 and, at that time, Azerbaijan conquered most of the territory all around the enclave,” Joel Veldkamp, head of international communications at persecution watchdog Christian Solidarity International (CSI), told CBN’s Faithwire. “And so there’s only one road that connects the 120,000 Christians who live in this enclave to the rest of the world, and it’s protected by a Russian peacekeeping force.”
That 2020 incursion complicates the situation even more, with Cox noting Azerbaijan’s victory at the time in capturing a significant amount of Nagorno-Karabakh. With the blockade continuing, some fear a full-on invasion, with Azerbaijan reportedly seeking to return its residents to the land.
Another issue tied to the dispute is Nagorno-Karabakh’s Christian history, with Cox explaining how “some of the most holy Christian places in the world” are inside the region.
The baroness said at least one church has already been destroyed.
“The Armenians were the first nation in the world to become Christian,” she said. “Some of the oldest churches in the world [are] in that little land of Karabakh.”
Cox added, “The annihilation of Christians is very much part of the agenda.”
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