User:R.Lemkin/sandbox

Ethnic cleansing
Let's start with definitions.

Ethnic cleansing

Although "ethnic cleansing" does not have a strict legal definition, it usually includes intentional forced migration (either direct or indirect) through coercion, intimidation, and/or genocide. These characteristics are mentioned by United Nations entities, including the UNSC. Two other characteristics listed by the UNSC include "arbitrary arrest and detention ... confinement of civilian population in ghetto areas."

Genocide

The intentional destruction of a people based on their perceived membership in a group. Also some genocide scholars and advocacy groups criticize the distinction, many media and scholars consider genocide to be a form of ethnic cleansing but not all ethnic cleansing is genocide.

Numerous reliable sources describe the blockade as aimed at ethnic cleansing and/or genocide.

Numerous reliable sources also characterize the blockade as a form of "intimidation", "coercion," and state that there is "intention" to "expel" or cause an  "outflow" of the Armenian population.

Given this, I'm struggling to see why you added "alleged" to the infobox. Looking forward to hearing you feedback on this!


 * The founding prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, describes the blockade as a genocide, under Article II, (c) of the Genocide Convention: "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction," adding that "... President Aliyev has Genocidal intentions: he has knowingly, willingly and voluntarily blockaded the Lachin Corridor even after having been placed on notice regarding the consequences of his actions by the ICJ’s [ International Court of Justice] provisional orders."
 * Another group of genocide scholars at the 2022 Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide declared: "we believe that the actions of the Azerbaijani government pose a threat of genocide to Armenians in the region."


 * "Khachatryan’s detention confirms the fears of many Karabakh Armenians that, if Azerbaijan assumes control over Karabakh, it will detain (and torture) them arbitrarily, using their participation in one or more of the wars as justification. This criteria extends to nearly every male resident of the small enclave."
 * The Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect issued an "atrocity alert" in which it says Azerbaijan's "intentional and unlawful denial of humanitarian assistance may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity."
 * The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention: "These events are not isolated events; they are, instead, being committed within a larger genocidal pattern against Armenia and Armenians by the Azerbaijani regime." The group also wrote "The genocidal intent of Baku has never been clearer and the actions carried out up to the moment highly predict this outcome." The group wrote Azerbaijan's "intentions are clear: to wipe out all traces of Armenian life and of an Armenian presence in this region. Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliyev, has consistently and repeatedly stated that he intends to eradicate the indigenous Armenians dwelling in Artsakh."
 * International Association of Genocide Scholars – condemned the blockade and Azerbaijan's "deliberate attacks on ... [Artsakh's] ...critical infrastructure." The group noted "significant genocide risk factors exist in the Nagorno-Karabakh situation concerning the Armenian population." The government of Azerbaijan...has issued repeated threats to empty the region of its indigenous Armenian population."


 * Genocide Watch – issued an alert stating "Due to its unprovoked attacks and genocidal rhetoric against ethnic Armenians, Genocide Watch considers Azerbaijan's assault on Armenia and Artsakh to be at Stage 4: Dehumanization, Stage 7: Preparation, Stage 8: Persecution, and Stage 10: Denial." The group described the blockade as "a clear attempt by the Azerbaijani government to starve, freeze, and ultimately expel Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh."


 * "The humanitarian catastrophe we are now witnessing—or, more accurately, the world is refusing to witness—is a textbook enactment of ethnic cleansing. More than a dozen nongovernmental organisations, including Genocide Watch, have issued a stark warning that Azerbaijan’s blockade is “designed to, in the words of the Genocide Convention, deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the end of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. All 14 risk factors for atrocity crimes identified by the UN Secretary-General’s Office on Genocide Prevention are now present.”
 * "This tactic is meant to bring about an outflow of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh through the creation of a humanitarian crisis." 
 * "Here, a deadly brew of armed aggression and ethnic cleansing against the majority population of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh" 
 * "The blockade...has as its aim the takeover of historic Armenian lands in the Republic of Artsakh and in the Republic of Armenia along with the forced displacement (“ethnic cleansing”) of the Armenian populations in Azeri-acquired territory." 
 * "This time, Armenians are being ethnically cleansed by Azerbaijan..."

Status after the 2020 War
The political status of Nagorno-Karabakh has remained unresolved since its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. During the Soviet Union, it had been an ethnic Armenian autonomous oblast of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Wheras Azerbaijan demands full control and sovereignty over the region and Artsakh insists on independence. Since 1994, the United Nations Security Council, OSCE Minsk Group, and other bodies made various statements and proposed dialogue initiatives; none of them successful. The Republic of Artsakh is not recognized by any country, including Armenia, although international mediators and human rights organizations have emphasized self-determination for the local Armenian population, both as an internationally recognized right but also as a form of genocide prevention.

Since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijan rescinded its offer of special status or autonomy to its indigenous Armenian residents and instead insists on their "integration" into Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani President Aliyev said that Artsakh residents must be "reintegrated" as "normal citizen[s] of Azerbaijan" and that "the [special] status [for the region] went to hell. It failed; it was shattered to smithereens. It is not and will not be there. As long as I am president, there will be no status." Aliyev has also threatened military action if the Artsakh government does not disband.

Despite being offered Azerbaijani citizenship, Artsakh residents do not trust Azerbaijan's guarantees of security due to the country's history of human rights abuses, Armenophobia, and lack of rights to ethnic minorities. Since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijan no longer promises any special status or autonomy to its indigenous Armenian residents. Various human rights observers, scholars specializing in genocide studies, and politicians consider the ongoing blockade of Artsakh to be a form of ethnic cleansing and warn of the risk of genocide. Many observers also do not consider Azerbaijan's claim that Artsakh Armenians can live safely under Aliyev’s regime to be credible

Political analyst Eric Hacopian has said that "[Expecting Armenians to submit to the rule of a nationalistic and undemocratic Azeri government] is the equivalent of asking 100,000 Israelis to live under Hamas." Caucuses expert, Laurence Broers wrote "the blockade renders irrelevant any talk of the civil integration of Karabakh Armenians. It vindicates the worst fears of the Karabakh Armenian population." If Azerbaijan takes control over the region, political analysts predict that Azerbaijan will arbitrarily detain and torture civilians, under the pretext of their association with the Artsakh government or with previous wars.

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Distinction between ("re-gain control/re-capture" vs "capture")
NMW03 has repeatedly made attempts to obfuscate the distinction between the following:


 * Azerbaijan has "re-gained control over"
 * Azerbaijan has "re-captured" Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh:

Although NMW03  stated "per source" here when reverting me for the second time on this very precise wording, the source does not, in fact, say Azerbaijan "re-captured" one-third of Nagorno-Karabakh. The source instead says this:
 * link to NMW03 's changes:1,2
 * "Following the second Karabakh war in 2020, Azerbaijan regained control over much of the previously occupied seven regions. Azerbaijan also captured one-third of Karabakh itself during the war." link

A large number of reliable sources state that Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh has never been de facto controlled by an independent Azerbaijan. Neither the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (1918-1920) nor the modern Azerbaijani Republic (1991-ongoing) has ever had de facto control of the region.


 * It is true that an independent Azerbaijan once had de facto control over the seven regions that surround Nagorno-Karabakh (pre-1994).
 * It is not true that an independent Azerbaijan ever had de facto control over Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh.
 * It is debatable to what extent the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan ever had de jure control over Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh, given that the region was considered an "autonomous oblast."

The overall consensus among reliable sources is that Azerbaijan has never had de facto control over Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh.

When the newly-independent Azerbaijan attempted to remove Nagorno-Karabakh’s status as an autonomous oblast, the region declared its independence as the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh after a referendum in December 1991. That is, when the Soviet Union collapsed, newly independent Azerbaijan had no de facto control over Nagorno-Karabakh; thus Stepanakert did not secede from an existing independent state and has never been de facto part of the post-Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan.

This is evidenced by the following reliable sources:


 * "As a result of the 2020 war, however, Azerbaijan received all territories around Soviet-era Nagorno Karabakh that were occupied by Armenian forces during the first Karabakh war, plus the two regions of Nagorno Karabakh proper: Shushi/Shusha and Hadrut." link
 * "The Armenian side also lost territories within the former NKAO, namely the district of Hadrut and the strategic town of Shusha/Shushi, areas that were not even considered for handover to Azerbaijan during the long years of diplomatic negotiations between the two wars." link
 * "The new agreement allows Azerbaijan to keep the territory it took by force, including Shusha and Hadrut, within the historic boundaries of Nagorno-Karabakh. It also requires Armenian forces to turn over other territories they have occupied for the last 26 years, including the so-called Lachin corridor, which is Nagorno-Karabakh's primary link to Armenia proper." link
 * "Nagorno-Karabakh had never been ruled by a post-Soviet independent Azerbaijan" link
 * "Thus, the above-mentioned clearly shows that Nagorno Karabakh has never been part of independent Azerbaijan." link
 * "Disputing the historical basis for Azerbaijan’s claim of title to territory, Armenia points out that the League of Nations refused to recognize the 1918–20 Azerbaijan Republic in part because the pro- spective state did not have effective control of the territory it claimed. This tidbit of historical legalism gives the Karabakh Armenians justification for claiming territory that was never, according to their argument, part of an independent Azerbaijan.... The Armenian argument emphasized not only that the disputed enclave had never been part of independent Azerbaijan but also that..." link
 * "Third, the region has never been part of the territory of independent Azerbaijan." link
 * "Heydar Aliyev’s monument in the heart of Mexico City, which on the lower end has cost $5.5 million, was “generously” donated by oil-rich Azerbaijan and contains another underlying message: the huge map made out of marble behind Aliyev’s sculpture shows Nagorno Karabakh as part of modern Azerbaijan. This territory was never part of independent Azerbaijan and was granted to Soviet Azerbaijan upon Stalin’s dictatorial pressure in 1921." link
 * "Thus, Nagorno-Karabakh was arguably never truly a part of independent Azerbaijan."link
 * Considering the Karabakh question,for instance,Azerbaijani history usually begins in the mid-1800s; with the normative,ideal situation considered to be the state of affairs for the 20th century (i.e. Azerbaijan has sovereignty over Karabakh). While discussing the Southern Azerbaijan issue, however,the nationalists' historical record portrays the normative,ideal situation as having ended in 1828-but even that period is problematic because the "united Azerbaijan" was never independent(as Elchibey's previous remark about the "restoration of a united Azerbaijan"might mislead one to believe); instead,it was always a part of the Iranian empire." link
 * "Under the rule of the Russian Tsar, Nagorno-Karabakh was assigned to the administrative districts from which the Republic of Azerbaijan later emerged. When Russian supremacy was weakened as a result of the revolu- tions in 1917, both Armenians and Azerbaijanis laid claim to Nagorno-Karabakh. The region’s affiliation was disputed and not determined at that time. Moreover, the proclaimed Armenian and Azerbaijani republics could not be considered as independent states and their recognition was, therefore, refused by the League of Nations in 1920 due to the lack of recognized borders, of a constitution, and of a stable government.53" link
 * "On 2 September the Karabakh Armenians also declared independence, which they underscored by means of a swiftly organized referendum, in which 99 per cent of the (Armenian) population voted for full sovereignty. Reciprocally' the Azeri parliament abolished the autonomy of Karabakh, which, however, had no further real influence on developments." link
 * "Under this agreement Nagorno-Karabakh has not been part of an independent Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan has not exercised sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh." link

Azerbaijan's attempts to annex Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh in 1919-1920 failed. Azerbaijan's territorial claims at the time were not recognized the international level either (i.e., Azerbaijan did not have de jure control). On December 1, 1920, the Fifth Committee of the League of Nations rejected the request of Azerbaijan for admission to the League of Nations, stating that its decision was motivated by Azerbaijan’s lack of established state borders.

After the Sovietization of Armenia and Azerbaijan, on November 30, 1920, the Soviets announced the (de jure) recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh, Zangezur and Nakhijevan as an integral part of Soviet Armenia. Later, however, with the support of the Soviets, Soviet Azerbaijan once again renewed its claims on Nagorno-Karabakh. On June 5, 1921, the Caucasus Bureau of the Communist Party of Russia, decided to include Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan as an autonomous region.

'''While it is true that Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region of the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic, the region still maintained autonomy at the time, which is what prompted the Azerbaijani SSR to initiate Law on Abolishment of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, a move which one author states "had no further real influence on developments." (link).''' Together, the evidence above shows that an independent Azerbaijan has never had de facto control over Nagorno-Karabakh. At most, Azerbaijan had de jure control during Soviet times, this limited de jure control was limited given that the region was considered an "autonomous oblast," and Azerbaijan was not really independent at the time (it was a Soviet state).

Therefore, it is more accurate the say that the outcome of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War resulted in an independent Azerbaijan "capturing" or "gaining control" of parts of the region for the first time.

NMW03 : please respond.

Distinction between ("occupy" vs "control")
This is a list of confirmed instances where Armenian non-combatant civilians were individually targeted by Azerbaijani forces during the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the 2021-2022 border crisis. Note this list does not include reported instances of mistreatment of Armenian prisoners of war, despoliation of the dead, or civilians killed en masse that occurred in these conflicts.

Official
Azerbaijan started an investigation on war crimes by Azerbaijani servicemen in November 2021 and as of 14 December 2021, has arrested four of its servicemen. The French National Assembly adopted a resolution calling for economic sanctions to be imposed on Azerbaijan for war crimes. Both Genocide Watch and the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention have issued "Genocide Warnings" or "Red Flag" genocide alerts to Azerbaijan due to civilian casualties or civilian infrastructure being targeted and "due to its genocidal rhetoric against ethnic Armenians." The Baku Human Rights Club, an Azerbaijani NGO, collected videos of alleged atrocities and worked with international partners to determine their authenticity. Referring specifically to Armenian farmers working in Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh, the prime minister of Armenia has written “Azerbaijan calls Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh ‘our citizens’ and, at the same time, shoots at them while they are doing agricultural work." According to Pashinyan, three civilians were killed and 16 wounded since Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a ceasefire agreement on November 9, 2020. There were, according to him, another 54 cases of “attempted murder.” The Human Rights Ombudsmen for the Republic of Artsakh reported as of September 27, 2021 that the majority of Armenian civilians killed in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War occurred in the Hadrut region while in their place of residence, with 38 killed in captivity under Azerbaijani control.

Public
Certain Azerbaijanis were convinced that the videos of these extrajudicial killings were part of a Russian-orchestrated negative PR campaign while other Azerbaijani civil societies called for a criminal case to be opened if their authenticity were verified. Elvin Basqalli, a news presenter of an Azerbaijani network, wrote on social media that Armenians deserved revenge for crimes against Azerbaijan.