Persecution of Armenians in Artsakh: a testimony by Marina Simonyan

See the full full story with more witness accounts in this 22-minute video: Remnants of the Sword: Armenians of Artsakh

TRANSCRIPT:

I am Marina Simonyan, 33 years old. I was born and raised in Artsakh.

It is difficult to talk about Artsakh in the past tense. It is difficult to talk about what I have been through, what all of the Artsakh Armenians have been through.

During my conscious life, I have witnessed 3 wars. I am a lawyer by profession.

I worked at the Human Rights Defender’s office as the head of educational, research, and analytical department.

Both as an individual and as a professional I witnessed such things that I could never imagine I would witness even in the worst of nightmares.

It was September 27, 2020 when Azerbaijan launched a large-scale war against the whole territory of Artsakh.

Azerbaijanis were deliberately targeting civilian infrastructures, carrying out assassinations of civilians.

These are not just mere words but facts recorded by the staff of the Human Rights Defender.

The Azerbaijanis raped women in front of their children and then killed them, and vice versa.

They would mercilessly torture children in front of their mothers’ eyes and then kill them.

They tried their best to humiliate and psychologically terrorize us all. They used loudspeakers to threaten us to leave our home.

We were receiving SMS messages telling us to leave our homeland, otherwise they would come in and kill us.

All this was followed by the blockade of Artsakh.

On December 12, 2022, Azerbaijan closed the only road connecting Artsakh to Armenia and the whole world.

Electricity and gas supplies were cut, we were deprived of minimum living conditions.

People were standing in line for hours at night just to get a small piece of bread.

Cases of fainting were recorded in those lines, followed by cases of starvation.

Imagine, in the heat of summer, pregnant women had to walk miles to get to a medical facility for a check-up.

There were many cases when pregnant women had miscarriages due to malnutrition.

And under such conditions, where all the people were tired and exhausted, there was no means of self-defense, Azerbaijan launched an attack once again.

September 19, 2023, in the afternoon when the children were at school… I can’t forget those days. A chaotic situation arose.

Parents were unable to contact their children while Azerbaijan continued to bomb.

The city was constantly being bombed by drones. It was a hell.

I also remember a case recorded by the Human Rights Defender’s staff when a child had a stroke from fear in the school yard.

Azerbaijanis had already entered rural communities and reached the capital city Stepanakert.

The inhabitants of the villages were forced to flee their homes barefoot, leaving everything behind.

All that our grandparents and parents told us, we witnessed ourselves.

We thought that we live in a civilized world, the 21st century, all that is in the past, but alas, we saw their handwriting and already realized that if staying in Artsakh there would be no other way out.

We were facing death, there was no other way out.

People left their homes and embarked on a seemingly endless journey of exodus.

I was one of the last people who left Artsakh and had the heaviest feelings during those days.

When the whole homeland is destroyed before your eyes, your whole nation is destroyed…

It was not just the loss of the homeland, but the loss of the face and roots of the identity of the nation as a whole.