It would be more precise to say that as a result of ethnic cleansings, more than 500,000 Armenians no longer have the opportunity to live in their homeland. That is the number of Armenians who were forcibly displaced from Azerbaijan and became refugees as a result of ethnic cleansing, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated during his speech at the 6th Paris Peace Forum on November 10.

“About 360,000 of them were forcibly displaced from Azerbaijan since the beginning of the 90s, as a result of the Sumgait and Baku massacres and Armenophobia. Since then, Armenophobia has been the state policy in Azerbaijan.

And before that, under the Soviet Union, due to administrative and psychological pressures, Armenians had to leave Nakhichevan and many other areas of Azerbaijan.

Around 26,000 Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh during the 44-day war of 2020. And as a result of the large-scale attack and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19, around 105,000 Armenians were forced to leave Nagorno-Karabakh within a week,“ he emphasized.

“For long time, we have alerted the international community that such a prospect becoming more and more realistic, especially after the illegal blockade of the Lachin Corridor in December 2022.

But the international community did not take any adequate measures and we cannot blame those people who claim that the forced displacement of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, took place with the silent or behind-the-scenes agreement of some of the international players,” Pashinyan concluded.