CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — In Chicago’s Daley Plaza, local Armenians gathered Saturday to celebrate the country’s independence from the Soviet Union — and to denounce the recent actions of Azerbaijan.
“Right now, in a part of Armenia called Nagorno-Karabakh — Armenians call it Artsakh — Azerbaijan is committing a genocide,” said Kenneth Hachikian, the co-chair of the Armenian National Committee of Illinois.
Hachikian is also the chairman of the Armenian Legal Center for Human Rights and Justice, he told WBBM that Azerbaijan’s forces are currently blockading 120,000 Armenians — with nearly 30,000 children among them — in Artsakh, a sovereign democracy on the border of Armenia.
“They’ve maintained a blockade since December 2022, not allowing any food or humanitarian aid,” he said. “They’re strangling the population. Three days ago, they came in and started shooting at civilians. Several hundred have been killed. They’re attempting to annihilate the Christian population.”
Azerbaijan is attempting to claim the nation through genocide, Hachikian said. Artsakh’s population is nearly 100% ethnically Armenian.
“Armenians have lived there for over 3,000 years,” Hachikian said. “There are Armenian churches, Armenian cultural artifacts. The Armenian civilization has been there for thousands of years.”
He added that the Armenians fear the worst, having already experienced the worst during the World War I-era Armenian Genocide, in which the estimated deaths range from 600,000 – 1.5 million.
Armenians have called for aid and the creation of a humanitarian corridor. There are also demands that the U.S. stop providing military aid to Azerbaijan.
“The United States should not be providing military aid to this dictatorship, which is using that aid to target the Armenians,” Hachikian said.
Following Azerbaijan’s blockade, a group of seven U.S. senators sponsored an act that would, among other things, approve humanitarian aid to the region.
Video from Saturday's flag-raising can be found here.
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