When the electric power returns, Huri Zohrabyan limits the heat to a single room, closes the doors so he cannot escape.
This has a component of daily life in Nagorno-Karabakh, where power cuts are daily and winter winds are cold.
Zohrathroughan is one of 120,000 other people living in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, a landlocked enclave populated mainly by ethnic Armenians but identified worldwide as part of Azerbaijan.
Born in Lebanon but of Armenian descent, Zohrathroughan immigrated to Montreal as a teenager. After marrying her husband in 2021, she traveled to her local Nagorno-Karabakh, called Artsakh through the Armenians.
Soon after, in December 2022, the only highway connecting the region to Armenia and the outside world, the Lachin Corridor, was blocked by protesters claiming to be environmental activists.
As a result, food and fuel are dangerously scarce.
“With this blockade, since the road is closed, we don’t receive anything. The outlets are empty,” Zohrabyan told CTV News in a video call on Wednesday. “The shops are empty, the pharmacies are empty. We don’t have any more vegetables. . . . fruits, oil, rice, flour. “
Gas is cut off, power comes and goes, and health care has been hit hard. Schools and many businesses have closed, exacerbating economic instability.
“It’s a survival factor here,” Zohrabyan said. Azerbaijan is creating a humanitarian crisis.
Nagorno-Karabakh has been a focal point in the confrontation between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
In 2020, the former introduced an offensive to take the region, at the time of the Nagorno-Karabakh war.
Six weeks of bloodshed ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire.
Azerbaijan has regained parts of the disputed territories and Russia has sent a peacekeeping force to maintain order.
Two years later, demonstrators recently blocked the Lachin Corridor to protest illegitimate mining.
According to Anar Jahangirli, chairman of the board of trustees of the Canadian Network of Azerbaijan (NAC), the protesters seek to save themselves from smuggling gold and copper “illegally extracted from the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. “
He said the purpose is to limit civilian traffic, which he said is “hampered by Russian peacekeepers and the Armenian administration. “
But Zohrathroughan and many Armenians say the blockades are a strategic attack through Azerbaijan against the other peoples of Karabakh.
“Their motive, their goal, is to ethnically cleanse Armenians,” Zohrabyan alleged. “I think that’s [their] goal, it’s just to create panic and make it unlivable. “
Like many, Zohrabyan would if she and her husband would remain in Karabakh once the blockades were lifted.
But for now, she has no plans to leave.
“If we start thinking that this position is a position we can no longer live in, then Azerbaijan will achieve its goal. So yes, we thought, ‘Should we stay here?’You know, this is our homeland, we have to fight for it,” he said.
“We will also have to have faith. We have to hope that everything goes well. “
Huri Zohrabyan (right) and her husband Petros Asryan (left). (Image courtesy)
Sevag Belian is the Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of Canada.
While Canada called on Azerbaijan’s government to lift the blockade, he said the country is doing more to combat the crisis.
“We hope that the Canadian government will accentuate its diplomatic efforts to apply this tension politically and economically, whether it takes the form of sanctions or anything else that opposes Azerbaijan,” Belian told CTV News.
He said Canada and other countries act before tensions escalate further, perhaps even providing assistance “on the ground. “
“Canada delights very, very much in peacekeeping and peacemaking. And certainly, the efforts of Canada and like-minded countries would be welcome on the ground,” Belian said, pointing to the precarious state of Russian peacekeepers serving in Nagorno-Karabakh lately, the same peacekeepers tasked with securing the Lachin corridor.
Meanwhile, Jahangiri of Azerbaijani Canadian Network says that Canada “talks to Azerbaijan and Armenia to inspire them to succeed in the earliest settlement of the conflict on the basis of foreign law norms and principles. “
In addition, he said Canada “supports demining efforts in the region. “
Huri Zohrabyan to see greater foreign awareness of the crisis.
She compares life in Canada to life in Karabakh, and the difference is striking.
“I’ve noticed how other people live in Canada,” he said. Why can’t [the children have] a general education, why can’t they live in peace?”
“After forty-five days, the time has come to be more active on this issue. Not just Canada, but the whole world. “