A small group of protestors assembled in front of the European Parliament building in Kirchberg to raise awareness over what they describe as the Luxembourg government’s ‘silence’ on the issue.
Arch enemies Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars -- in 2020 and in the 1990s -- over Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In the aftermath of the latest war, Armenia was forced to cede swathes of territory it had controlled for decades, and Russia deployed some 2,000 peacekeepers to oversee a fragile truce, but tensions persist despite a ceasefire agreement.
Now a ‘lifeline’ road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia has been blockaded, with accusations flying about who is responsible.
Armenia claims that the Azerbaijani government is behind the blockade, while Azerbaijan insists that the road is being blocked by legitimate, and spontaneous, protestors.
The Luxembourg Armenian community say that, as Christmas approaches, the cutting off of the road has led to empty supermarket shelves and delayed hospital operations.
“This blockade has [the] ultimate goal of ethnic cleansing and this should not be tolerated,” said Francie Derderyan, a lawyer and head of the AGBU Young Professionals of Luxembourg, which organised the protest.
“We demand the international community take concrete actions against the Azerbaijani aggression,” he added.
Tigran Balayan, Ambassador of Armenia to Luxembourg, added to the calls of the protestors, stating that “Azerbaijan’s siege of Nagorno-Karabakh... is [a] gross violation of all possible bilateral, trilateral and multilateral commitments and obligations, international humanitarian law, precisely the Geneva Conventions.”
For its part, the Azerbaijani government claims that Armenia is using the ‘lifeline’ road to covertly transfer in military equipment. Armenian officials deny the accusation.
