"
Artsakh is ours
", thousands of Armenians - between 15,000 and 20,000 according to the organizers, 4200 according to the police - demanded this Sunday in Paris for the "
recognition
" by France and the international community of the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh, the scene of heavy fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces.
Read also: How Baku broke through Nagorno-Karabakh
"
Stop Turkish-Azeri aggression
", "
stop indifference
", French and Armenian flags side by side, a determined crowd gathered at the Place du Trocadéro to demand that France abandon "
its neutrality
" vis-à-vis the conflict in Haut -Karabakh.
"
We are the descendants of the Armenian genocide of 1915, Armenians are once again the target of an extermination attempt
", denounced, from a forum, Ara Toranian, co-president of the Ccaf (coordination council of the Armenian organizations of France ).
He accused "
a pan-Turkish coalition
" of having started the conflict at the end of September so that Azerbaijan seizes the enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, an Armenian-majority region which proclaimed its independence after the fall of the USSR , during a war that killed 30,000 people.
Today, said Toranian, “
it is not a war when you have on one side Turkey with 80 million inhabitants, the Azeris with 8 million, and on the other only 4 million Armenians and a small piece of Armenian land populated by 140,000 inhabitants
”.
“
It is an attempted mass murder with military means,
” he said, denouncing Turkey's involvement.
The crowd then began to chant "
Recep Erdogan, terrorist
".
Read also: The Armenian community of France united for Nagorno-Karabakh
Armenia accuses Ankara of providing "
military technical support
" and of having sent "
terrorists
" to help Azerbaijan "
recover its occupied lands
", in Erdogan's terms.
The co-president of the Ccaf justified Armenia's support for Nagorno-Karabakh: "
we share their values, freedom, democracy, feminism,
" he said, criticizing the silence of Europe where "
Yet we like to cry over the fate of the Christians of the East
".
“
France must take its responsibilities, the time is no longer for diplomacy.
For 30 years, we negotiated but today the Turkish-Azeri armada is raining a deluge of fire on Nagorno-Karabakh
", he said, calling on President Emmanuel Macron to"
follow his logic to the end. , after having denounced the presence of Syrian jihadists, and saying stop to Turkey
”.
Paris must, according to him, "
politically recognize the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and protect it
".
"
Recognition, recognition
", then resumed in chorus the crowd.
"Resistance to fanaticism"
Patrick Karam, vice-president of the Ile de France regional council, originally from Armenia, strongly attacked Turkey.
“
Erdogan must be brought before an international tribunal, kicked out of NATO, Europe must tell him outside.
(Ilham) Aliev (the Azerbaijani president) must be ostracized by the international community
, ”continued the elected official.
For him, the "
neutrality (in this conflict) of France insulted by Erdogan and humiliated Europe, is complicity
".
Journalist Franz Olivier Giesbert, columnist for the weekly
Le Point
, married to an Armenian, brought his solidarity "
to the Armenian people who embody resistance to fanaticism, barbarism, corruption and national-Islamism. Erdogan and Aliev
”.
He also criticized the “
neutrality
” defended by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, calling it “
cowardice in the face of corrupt and corrupting leaders
” using oil dollars to buy weapons.
Also speaking to Minister Le Drian, Jean-Michel Ekherian, a doctor who had just returned from Nagorno-Karabakh, wished to testify to the use by the Azerbaijani forces of "
unconventional weapons
".
Read also: Nagorno-Karabakh: Macron received the Armenian president on Thursday
The surgeon denounced the role of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in selling lethal weapons like drones to Azerbaijan.
“
It concerns you and your clique, not the population nor the Jews
”, he made clear, adding: “
money is a good servant but a bad master
”.
He also addressed the Azerbaijani people, "
deprived of access to social networks like Facebook and Twitter
": "
your government is cheating and stealing from you, they are going to look for children in families to enlist them by force
".
