Vance Should Bypass Azerbaijan After Its ‘Kangaroo Court’ Sentencings of Armenians

On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev ordered his forces to ethnically cleanse the remaining indigenous Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh despite promises just days earlier not to do so. More than 200 Armenians died as Azeri troops drove 120,000 ethnic Armenians off their land, razed graves, and vandalized or destroyed churches and monasteries.

Aliyev was upset not only about the dispute over sovereignty—Nagorno-Karabakh had declared its independence in September 1991 in accordance with the Soviet-era constitution, a decision confirmed overwhelmingly in a referendum two months later—but also because the Republic of Artsakh’s democracy put it to shame. While Freedom House ranks Azerbaijan as among the world’s most consolidated dictatorships, on par with the military junta in Myanmar and less free than Cuba, China, or Russia, it ranked Artsakh prior to the conquest as “partly free,” roughly on par with Ukraine or Tanzania.

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