Azernews.Az

IGDIR/TURKEY – A group of people in Turkey’s Igdir province have held a hunger strike demanding liberation of Azerbaijan’s Upper (Nagorno) Karabakh region from Armenian occupation.

Protesters wearing shirts saying "Freedom to Karabakh" made a call on the United States, Russia and France, the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group brokering settlement to the Karabakh dispute, the Baku-based ANS TV channel reported. They urged the mediating countries to be fair in their approach to the long-standing conflict and not to remain indifferent to the suffering of up to a million Azerbaijanis ousted from their homes during the war fought with Armenia in the early 1990s.

"A million people have faced a crime against humanity. If we set aside religion and race, there is a crime against mankind. To put an end to this, we want the OSCE Minsk Group to immediately do away with this," said Goksel Gulbey, the head of ASIM DER, a group working to counter Armenian claims about the alleged 1915 genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

Azerbaijan’s deputy consul-general in Kars, Rafig Rustamov, has reportedly visited the site of the hunger strike. Rustamov voiced support for the protest, stressing the importance of putting international pressure on Armenia to prevent further occupation of Azerbaijani territories.

The two-day hunger strike was held in a closed room with the photos of the babies murdered by the Armenians during the massacre committed against Azerbaijanis in Khojaly in 1992 and with Azerbaijani and Turkish flags.

20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, including Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent districts, has been under Armenian occupation since the two South Caucasus republics signed a precarious cease-fire in 1994 following a lengthy war. Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions demanding its unconditional pullout from the occupied territories. Efforts by the international mediators have been largely fruitless so far.