The eleven mostly single persons with health problems were bused to Armenia by through the former Lachin corridor on Friday. Armenia’s Labor and Social Affairs Minister Arsen Torosian said they all asked Azerbaijani authorities to evacuate them from Karabakh. Gegham Stepanian, Karabakh’s exiled human rights ombudsman, disputed the claim. Stepanian suggested that their evacuation was agreed by official Baku and Yerevan.
Tigran Petrosian, another Karabakh Armenian activist who has briefly spoken to one of the evacuees, was more categorical, saying that they were evicted from the region recaptured by Azerbaijan in September 2023.
“[During the journey to Armenia] they even started talking among themselves that ‘they are going to kill us,’” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday. “That is, they didn't know they are on their way to the Hakkari [border crossing with Armenia.]”
Petrosian, who has rarely criticized the Armenian government, unlike Stepanian, accused it of trying to cover up what he called “the last chord of ethnic cleansing” carried out by Azerbaijan in Karabakh.
More than 100,000 Karabakh Armenians, the region’s virtually entire remaining population, fled to Armenia in the space of a week following Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive. Only a few dozen others chose at the time to live under Azerbaijani rule in Karabakh. Baku denies that the mass exodus was the result of ethnic cleansing.
Echoing statements by other Karabakh activists and leaders exiled in Yerevan, Petrosian said Azerbaijani authorities herded the 11 ethnic Armenians into a hotel in Stepanakert and kept them there under de facto house arrest in the months leading up to their evacuation.
“[Azerbaijani officials] kept saying, ‘Why did you stay? Why don’t you leave? Get out!’” claimed Petrosian.
Armenian journalists have still not been able to interview any of the latest Karabakh refugees. Some of their relatives in Armenia claim to have trouble obtaining permission to visit them.
According to the Armenian Health Ministry, three of the refugees are now undergoing medical checkups at a psychiatric clinic in Yerevan. Sources told RFE/RL’s Armenian that the others are staying in a secluded hotel in Aghveran, a resort 50 kilometers north of Yerevan.
The 11 persons are said to have boarded the Azerbaijani bus bound for Armenia together with another Karabakh Armenian, Misha Grigorian. Azerbaijani state media has repeatedly interviewed Grigorian in Stepanakert for propaganda purposes since 2023. He has not only made pro-Azerbaijani statements but also testified against Ruben Vardanyan during the Armenian businessman and philanthropist’s ongoing trial in Baku.
In Petrosian’s words, Grigorian repeatedly begged Azerbaijani officials not to send him to Armenia and eventually convinced them to pull him off the bus mid-way through the trip.
“He was afraid that they would kill him here,” claimed Petrosian. “He fell at the Azeris’ feet and the Azeris said, ‘If you stay, we will kill you here.’ He said, ‘OK, you kill me.’”