LYNN ZOVIGHIAN
My first investigation into genocide began with a review of fatwas published by Da’esh, also known as ISIS, against the Yazidi people, an ancient religious community. Their published postulations created a paper trail of very traceable decentralized data. Many of these data points were videos released by militants on social media showing women being sexually enslaved and corpses of men and the elderly in mass graves. Documenting the lived experiences of Yazidi survivors made the case of community elimination unequivocal. The intentionality and deep evidence of genocide reeked.
I have been examining videos released on social media platforms by Azerbaijani soldiers showing the killings and dismemberments of soldiers and civilians in Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh) and Armenia. The footage includes cheers and laughs to desecrate and destroy prisoners of war. Syrian mercenaries recruited into the Azerbaijani military have confirmed they would receive $30,000 for every limb they severed and $40,000 for every Armenian they killed.
Young girl protesting in Stepanakert to demand the recognition of Armenian rights. PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHNY KONDAKJIAN/THE ZOVIGHIAN PARTNERSHIP
Persistent retweeting by Azeri bots on Twitter spread the pleasures of killing with barbarism and animalistic savagery and the joys of booty from a war—the “44-day war,” that had a known start but still no clear end. Today, Nov. 10, 2022, marks two years since that war supposedly ceased under terms that are still not disclosed to the citizens of Artsakh, Armenia, and the world.
In parallel is an interesting repertoire of official statements and videos by the Azerbaijani government and the Turkish government that are timed to reinforce messages in a special partnership they call “one nation, two states.” Since the summer of 2020, there has been a notable rise in the number of speeches and declarations by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan clarifying and powering a strategy for Turkish expansionism. In July 2020, a clipping of his speech calling for the completion of a centuries-old mission in the Caucasus surfaced on social media. Two months later, the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia began. This very elaborate public relations and communications strategy is further compounded by joint videos between both governments.
In June 2021, a clipping from AzTV, a state-controlled channel in Azerbaijan, featured Erdogan and first lady Emine Erdogan with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev jokingabout the Armenian prisoners captured during the 44-day war. Connecting decentralized data together, there is a traceable digital trail of coordinated propaganda normalizing the completion of a genocide that failed over 100 years ago against the Armenians, Assyrians, Yazidis, and Greeks.
Immense efforts by scholars, lawyers, and advocacy organizations around the world continue to compile, verify, and analyze a plethora of videos, statements, press releases, and bots. Once again, the testimonies of the lived experiences of survivors, both soldiers and civilians in Artsakh and Armenia, are centerpiece to documenting and activating legitimate claims to transitional justice as per international law. The patterns and convergence of data present a decentralized policy of complicity and deflected accountability, with an execution that is increasingly clearly centralized under a vision from the very top. The intentionality and striking evidence of genocide reeks once again.
The genocides against the Yazidis and Armenians are deeply interconnected. During my visit to Ziarat Yazidi Temple just outside Yerevan in August 2022, I was deeply moved by the many statues documenting genocide and standing tall on the sacred groundsshowing a collective and inseparable history and identity. My visit ended in the community hall bearing a memorial wall in honor of the fallen Yazidi Armenian soldiers who fought for Artsakh in 2020.
Back in June 2015, I presented my analysis to Yazidi community institution, Yazda, demonstrating a case of genocide with ample evidence of the intent to kill the Yazidi people in part and/or whole using multiple strategies, which under international law constitute conditions of genocide. The intent to eliminate the Yazidi people was authenticated by detailed survivor testimonies of women who had managed to escape Da’esh territory. Advocacy efforts resulted in a wave of recognitions of genocide by the United Nations and the international community. Many friends around the world adopted the Yazidi cause as their own and claimed allegiance to “never again.” Eight years in, the world has yet to fundamentally address, resolve, and end the many starting conditions that enabled genocide in Sinjar, Iraq.
Communities and advocates know when a collective experience is genocide even before international law confirms it. The methodology of the law continues to put genocide on the defensive. It is almost solely on survivors and communities to document, demonstrate, and supply proof of calculated means driven by cataloged hatred, usually after the fact. Survivors are forced to become storytellers by sacrificing their well-being to cycles of trauma and re-traumatization. Forensic methods and science are now bringing significant agility to making the case, but on the basis that evidence is not tampered with or destroyed.
Da’esh thrived in showcasing its evil and purposefully left much of the destruction of Sinjar and devastation of communities for all to witness and document. The perpetrators of an emerging genocide today in Artsakh and against the Armenian nation are a lot smarter and strategic. History continues to make clear that perpetrators of genocide always have the upper hand due to resources, time, and impunity. The international community has a deeply moral responsibility toward “never again”—one it has never been able to exercise. We are no less ready or capable of preventing genocide today. We have a lot to learn, but neither Artsakh, Armenia, the Yazidis, nor any other community facing genocide—the Tigrayans, the Uyghurs, the list is too long—deserve to be told to wait until further notice.
Lynn Zovighian is the co-founder and managing director of The Zovighian Partnership (ZP). A philanthropist, she also manages the ZP Public Office that has served on advocacy missions for Armenia and against genocide since 2015.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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