Nagorno-Karabakh: Dream of independence comes to an end
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Transcript
00:00 We begin with the latest from Nagorno-Karabakh, where nearly 70,000 people, that's half the
00:04 enclave's population, is reported to have fled to neighbouring Armenia.
00:08 The enclave's long dream of independence came to an end with Azerbaijan's offensive last
00:12 week and today the region's separatist leadership announced that all state institutions and
00:18 the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh itself would cease to exist.
00:23 Azerbaijan is allowing fighters who lay down their arms to head to Armenia, but Baku says
00:26 it reserves the right to detain those suspected of "war crimes".
00:30 Amongst those detained, the former head of the Nagorno-Karabakh government, Ruben Vardanyan.
00:36 Little earlier I spoke to France 34's international affairs editor Ketevan Gorjastani and asked
00:40 her whether this was the end of the region's dream of independence.
00:45 This is really the official end now that this country, well this region and its leaders
00:53 are saying that it will cease to exist and it's not just an independence dream over the
00:59 past three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, but really a sort of end of a century-long
01:07 basically autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh because Nagorno-Karabakh was created or given the
01:15 autonomous region status by the Soviets back in 1923 and so they already had the sort of
01:22 autonomy within the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan at the time.
01:27 And then towards the end of the Soviet Union, the ethnic Armenians there started making
01:32 that push to try to be reunited with Armenia.
01:36 That of course didn't happen.
01:38 The Azerbaijanis rejected that.
01:40 And so in 1991, the ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh had the sort of referendum to declare their
01:47 independence which was not recognized by Azerbaijan, not recognized by the international community.
01:52 But it was their push for that and that followed with a war, the first war really that ended
02:00 in a ceasefire in 1994.
02:02 And basically since then Nagorno-Karabakh had sort of de facto regulated itself and
02:09 governed itself until now.
02:13 They always had this dream of independence.
02:16 They were sort of living an autonomous life, if you will.
02:21 It was not the dream, obviously, as we saw with the situation on the ground.
02:25 But now it seems that with this decision to say that Nagorno-Karabakh will cease to exist,
02:33 as well as this exodus that we've been talking about for several days now, emptying Nagorno-Karabakh
02:40 of its ethnic Armenians, that seems to be really the end for Nagorno-Karabakh that is
02:46 ethnically Armenian.
02:47 Okay, and all the while Azerbaijan has been saying they'll let people leave the enclave
02:52 and go to Armenia, as 70,000 people have now done.
02:56 But some people are being arrested nevertheless.
03:00 Just tell us about who's being arrested and why.
03:02 Well, so far we know of two people who were linked to the leadership of Nagorno-Karabakh,
03:09 to those separatists.
03:11 Ruben Vardanyan, he's the former leader of Nagorno-Karabakh.
03:16 He was charged with financing terrorism and for illegally crossing the border.
03:22 But that was last year.
03:24 So he has officially been arrested.
03:26 We saw the pictures of his arrest.
03:28 There's also David Babanyan.
03:31 He was an advisor to the Nagorno-Karabakh leadership, and he posted on his social media
03:37 that he was going to give himself up to the Azerbaijani authorities.
03:43 So not being arrested directly, he has decided to give himself up.
03:48 And there is this worry that even though Azerbaijan has said we will let people leave if they
03:55 want to leave, you're now seeing Aliyev saying, you don't have to leave.
04:00 We urge ethnic Armenians to stay in Nagorno-Karabakh.
04:03 We will protect their rights.
04:05 There is a fear, especially among fighting age men, that they might be arrested too.
04:11 And there seems to be, at least from the reporting on the ground, that those cars that are leaving
04:16 Nagorno-Karabakh, the border guards, the Azerbaijani border guards, are trying to check some people
04:23 who might be suspected of having taken up arms at some point.
04:27 So checking for that.
04:29 And so those men are a little bit worried about what will happen if they're seen as
04:34 people who fought against the Azerbaijani.