“Cleansing”, “purification”, “genocide”: for several days, several French parliamentarians have denounced the forced exodus of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijan’s lightning victory. The government, for its part, describes the situation as a “drama” while insisting that “France is acting” to resolve this crisis.
More than 100,000 people, out of the 120,000 officially registered by Yerevan, fled this enclave after Baku’s lightning offensive at the end of September, which took control of this disputed territory even before the fall of the Soviet Union.
For the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, Nagorno-Karabakh has been “emptied of all its inhabitants”. “[They] just lost everything in a few hours: their home, their history, the place where they were born,” she lamented Tuesday on RTL.
In an interview with Le Figaro published Tuesday, the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, called for “to be in solidarity with Armenia and the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh [who] are driven from a land that was theirs”.
On the right, the president of the Association of Mayors of France, David Lisnard (Les Républicains), was indignant on CNews and Europe 1 at “a desire (…) to remove Christians” from this region.
On the left, MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, close to the Socialist Party, said on X (formerly Twitter) that “Europe must do everything possible to protect Armenia”. Mathilde Panot, president of the “rebellious” group in the National Assembly, asked in a letter to the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, to explain to Parliament the “position of France” on this armed conflict.
Agreement to deliver military equipment to Armenia
Others, like the environmentalist senator Yannick Jadot and the socialist deputy Christine Pires-Beaune, have even put forward the term “genocide”, loaded with meaning in this Caucasian country traumatized by the massacre of its population by the Ottoman Empire. more than a century ago.
Renaissance MP Guillaume Kasbarian, himself of Armenian origin, also highlights that “France is the only country in Europe which speaks on the subject”. Among the heads of state, Emmanuel Macron “is the only one to put such pressure to obtain strong European decisions,” he assured Agence France-Presse.
For its part, the government is cautious in its expression. Its spokesperson, Olivier Véran, described the situation on Sunday as a “humanitarian tragedy” and again affirmed on Wednesday after the council of ministers that “France is alongside the Armenians in this drama that Armenia is facing today. ‘today’.
Elisabeth Borne herself, questioned on Tuesday by MP Jean-Louis Bourlanges (MoDem) on “the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh and its tens of thousands of victims”, responded by emphasizing the “extreme seriousness” of this “exodus massive and organized.”
At the same time, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, announced from Yerevan the Paris “agreement” for “future contracts” for the delivery of military equipment.
The President of the Republic has not spoken on the subject since his television interview on September 24, during which he said he was “very vigilant about the territorial integrity of Armenia.” “Today we have a Russia which is complicit with Azerbaijan, a Turkey which has always supported these maneuvers and a power which is uninhibited and which threatens the border of Armenia,” he clarified. , after Baku’s lightning victory against the separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh.