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The Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry (the ECAJ), the peak rep­res­ent­at­ive body of the Aus­trali­an Jewish community, has been following reports of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, known locally as Artsakh, with growing concern. The ECAJ deplores the state-sanc­tioned incite­ment of racial and religious hatred wherever and whenever it occurs. Many civilians have already been killed, and the UN has so far failed to halt the fighting.

Artsakh is populated mainly by highland people of ethnic Armenian back­ground. Armenian culture and the Armenian Apostolic Church are central to the country’s long and rich history. Following an over­whelm­ing vote by its people in 1991, Artsakh declared its inde­pend­ence.

At the time it achieved inde­pend­ence, the right of Artsakh to exist as a State was violently contested by way of a military attack upon it by neigh­bour­ing Azerbaijan. Artsakh won its fight for inde­pend­ence and has been a stable and suc­cess­ful demo­crat­ic State ever since.

Now, for a second time, Azerbaijan has initiated military force, with the backing of Turkey’s Erdogan gov­ern­ment, with the declared aim of des­troy­ing Artsakh as an inde­pend­ent State. The Azerbaijan gov­ern­ment has also stepped up incite­ment of racial and religious hatred against the Armenian people, and promised to divide up the spoils of conquest among Azerbaijnis once Artsakh is mil­it­ar­ily defeated and occupied, with the con­sequent threat to the existing local pop­u­la­tion.

Given the history of Ottoman Turkey’s sys­tem­at­ic mass murder and expulsion of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians during the Armenian genocide between 1914 and 1923, this latest move by the Erdogan gov­ern­ment of Turkey against the same ethnic group is espe­cially con­cern­ing.

We express our solid­ar­ity with our friends and col­leagues in the Armenian community in Australia. Many Aus­trali­an Armenians have family in the region and are under­stand­ably dis­tressed by recent events.

We call on all gov­ern­ments to do everything in their power to dis­cour­age the latest military assault upon Artsakh, and to raise their voices and demand an immediate halt to it.

Contact
Peter Wertheim | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8505 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 588
e: [email protected]| www.ecaj.org.au