CHURCH leaders have urged the Prime Minister to put pressure on Azerbaijan to release Armenians imprisoned on “fabricated charges”.
On Monday, the Armenian Primate in the UK and Ireland, Bishop Hovakim Manukyan, sent a letter to Sir Keir Starmer. It was signed by eight other church leaders, including the Bishops of Winchester, Southwark, and Leeds.
The letter says: “Following the forced displacement of 120,000 Armenians from Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) in 2023 [News, 13 October 2023], Azerbaijan has arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned, and indicted on the basis of fabricated charges, twenty-three Artsakh government officials and prisoners of war, as well as civilians. These individuals are now being tried in violation of all basic principles of fair trial.”
The letter refers to Ruben Vardanyan, a former State Minister of Artsakh, who has been imprisoned since September 2023, and who has been on hunger strike for more than 20 days. Mr Vardanyan has been charged with “offenses under the Criminal Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan”, Azerbaijani state media report.
Writing on the Church Times website this week, Paul Polman, who chairs the Saïd Business School and is vice-chair of the UN Global Compact, writes: “For almost 550 days, he [Mr Vardanyan] has endured imprisonment far from family and friends, his health deteriorating with each passing hour. Showing visible signs of torture and facing a secret military trial, he continues to be punished for one ‘crime’: helping fellow Armenian Christians in their ancestral homeland.”
Mr Polman writes that Britain and other Western nations have been agreeing “energy partnerships with Azerbaijan” while “turning a blind eye to these atrocities”. “The imprisonment of Ruben and 22 other Armenian leaders represents a failure of moral courage that should trouble every Christian conscience,” he says.
The religious leaders’ letter says that Azerbaijan has cracked down on “transparency and humanitarian relief” by suspending the BBC’s operations, “silencing independent journalism”, and expelling the International Committee of the Red Cross, “the only organization providing humanitarian aid and the only lifeline to detainees”.
The letter urges Sir Keir “to take decisive action and call for the immediate release of the detainees”, and “to urge Azerbaijan to comply with its international obligations”.