ANCA: The Armenian American community joins Chairman Menendez in demanding answers about the State Department’s refusal to forcefully confront Azerbaijan’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Artsakh

The Armenian National Committee of America released a statement regarding the US Senate hearing on the crisis in Artsakh:

Under intense grilling today by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a mid-level Biden-Harris Administration aide repeatedly dodged direct questions about the State Department’s failure to break Azerbaijan’s genocidal blockade of Artsakh – even refusing, on national security grounds, to answer Chairman Robert Menendez’s (D-NJ) straightforward query about Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s motives for starving 120,000 indigenous Christian Armenians, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

Today’s hearing, titled “Assessing the Crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh,” was chaired by Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) and featured testimony by Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia Yuri Kim. The chair led members of the Committee in direct, often confrontational questioning of the State Department refusal to hold Azerbaijan accountable or to provide urgently needed humanitarian aid to Artsakh.

“The signature moment – the defining exchange – of today’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee Artsakh hearing was Acting Assistant Secretary Yuri Kim hiding behind a transparently slippery appeal to state secrets to avoid answering a straightforward question about Aliyev’s obvious motives for blockading Artsakh,” stated ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “The Armenian American community joins Chairman Menendez in demanding answers about the State Department’s refusal to forcefully confront Azerbaijan’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Artsakh.”

When asked by Senator Menendez, “why do you think, despite its signed commitments and a ruling by the International Court of Justice to open the Lachin Corridor, that Aliyev is not opening the corridor,” Acting Assistant Secretary Kim refused to answer publicly, inferring the matter is classified.

An “amazed” and clearly disappointed Senator Menendez offered his own answer. “He [President Aliyev] doesn’t want to open the corridor because he is in the process of trying to subjugate these people by starvation, or by the threat of starvation, and at the end of the day subject them to his will. That doesn’t have to be classified.”

Chairman Menendez was joined by Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in pressing the State Department to enforce Section 907 restrictions on US military assistance to Azerbaijan.

“I have repeatedly expressed my deep opposition to waiving Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, allowing the United States to send assistance to his regime. This clearly alters the balance of military power between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Aliyev’s favor. I think Azerbaijan’s actions over the past three years have vindicated my skepticism,” stated Chairman Menendez.