Conditions are present for genocide against the indigenous Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh).

On December 12, the government of Azerbaijan imposed a blockade on Nagorno Karabakh and its 120,000 Armenian residents, preventing food, medicine, gas, and other vital goods from transiting through the Lachin Corridor, the only land route into the region.

The government of Azerbaijan has long promoted official hatred of Armenians, has fostered impunity for atrocities committed against Armenians and has issued repeated threats to conquer not only Nagorno Karabakh but also Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, by force.

The present blockade is designed to, in the words of the Genocide Convention, “deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the end of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group in whole or in part.”

All 14 risk factors for atrocity crimes identified by the UN Secretary-General’s Office on Genocide Prevention are now present.

The current Azerbaijani aggression against the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh conforms to a long pattern of ethnic and religious cleansing of Armenian and other Christian communities in the region by the government of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, and their partisans.

We call on all contracting parties to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, particularly the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation, to fulfill their obligations, through the UN Security Council, to prevent another chapter of the Armenian Genocide.

We also call on the UN Security Council to act to ensure unrestricted humanitarian access for all international organizations to Nagorno Karabakh, in accordance with the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Christian Solidarity International

Baroness Cox, Independent Member of the House of Lords

American Friends of Kurdistan

Armenian Bar Association

Armenian National Committee of America

Genocide Watch

Hellenic American Leadership Council

Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust

In Defense of Christians

International Christian Concern

The Philos Project

Prof Armen T. Marsoobian (First Vice President, International Association of Genocide Scholars)

Lela Gilbert, Fellow: Hudson Center for International Religious Freedom

Center for Truth and Justice

By Harut Sassounian

The New York Times published on November 28, 2022, a shocking article by reporter Constant Méheut, titled: “A Paris Museum Has 18,000 Skulls. It’s Reluctant to Say Whose.”

The article reveals that the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Mankind) in Paris, France, holds a “vast collection of human remains.” Stored in the basement of that museum are “18,000 skulls that include the remains of African tribal chiefs, Cambodian rebels and Indigenous people from Oceania. Many were gathered in France’s former colonies, and the collection also includes the skulls of more than 200 Native Americans, including from the Sioux and Navajo tribes. The remains, kept in cardboard boxes stored in metal racks, form one of the world’s largest human skull collections, spanning centuries and covering every corner of the earth.” Five of the skulls belong to Armenian Genocide victims. The museum has not made public the information about the identities of the 18,000 skulls, fearing restitution lawsuits.

I read the December 15, 2021 report of a French Senate Committee on its discussion of a proposed law about the fate of the remains at the museum. During that meeting, Sen. Catherine Morin-Desailly, co-author of the proposed law, stated: “amazingly, we find in our collections skulls dating from the Armenian Genocide.” Sen. Pierre Ouzoulias, another co-author of the proposed law, added: “I was overwhelmed learning that five Armenian skulls of victims of the Armenian Genocide, which were recovered in Deir-ez Zor [Syria], are still in the collections of the Museum of Mankind.”

Since New York Times reporter Méheut mentioned in his article that he had obtained confidential documents about the human remains in the museum, I wrote to him asking if these documents contained any details about the skulls of the five Armenian Genocide victims. He informed me that they were female skulls which were collected by Emmanuel Passemard, a French prehistory specialist, during his explorations in Syria in 1925-1926. The Bulletin of the French Prehistoric Society reported that Passemard gave a lecture at the Sorbonne University in Paris on February 16, 1927, during which he described his trip to the banks of the Euphrates River in Syria.

Méheut wrote in his article that “while France has led the way in Europe in investigating and returning colonial-era collections of artifacts — cultural objects, made by human hands — it has lagged behind its neighbors when it comes to remains.” The claimant of the remains has to prove an ancestral connection. However, “French legislation has made any return a cumbersome and time-consuming process.”

Méheut added: “As with other 19th-century museums, the Museum of Mankind was initially a repository for items gathered from around the world. The skulls were collected during archaeological digs and colonial campaigns, sometimes by soldiers who beheaded resistance fighters. Prized by researchers working in the now-debunked field of race science, the remains then fell into relative oblivion. In 1989, Philippe Mennecier, the curator [of the museum], put together the first electronic database of the collection. It enabled him to identify hundreds of what he called ‘potentially litigious’ skulls — remains of anticolonial fighters and Indigenous people, collected as war trophies or plundered by explorers — that could be claimed by people wishing to honor their ancestors.”

Christine Lefèvre, a top official at the Museum of Natural History, which oversees the Museum of Mankind, and Martin Friess, who is responsible for the museum’s modern anthropology collections, told Méheut the information was withheld because of privacy concerns, fear of controversy and because of uncertainties around some remains’ identities. “But several scholars and lawmakers said the museum’s stance stemmed from a greater concern: that transparency could open the floodgates for restitution claims,” Méheut wrote. “Over the past two decades, France has returned only about 50 sets of remains, including to South Africa, New Zealand and Algeria.”

Méheut explained that “to make matters more complicated, objects in public museum collections are the property of the French state and cannot change ownership unless the return is voted into law — a cumbersome process that has sometimes led France to lend remains instead of ceding possession. A representative for France’s culture ministry said officials were working on a sweeping law to regulate future returns of human remains.” The French government has yet to accept “a bill passed by the Senate in January that would remove the need for Parliament to approve every restitution.”

During the French Senate committee hearing, referring to the skulls of victims of the Armenian Genocide, Sen. Ouzoulias told his colleagues: “This is intolerable. We risk a major diplomatic conflict with certain countries when they become aware of the content of our collections. It is time to stop this. We can no longer live with corpses in our closets.”

Now that Armenians have learned about the storage of the skulls of five Armenian Genocide victims in a French museum, I suggest that the Armenian government, through its embassy in Paris, make an immediate request for the return of these skulls to Armenia to be buried near the Armenian Genocide Memorial complex in Yerevan. These victims deserve a respectful burial after being stored in a box in the basement of a French museum for a century.

This documentary chronicles the genocide of the Greeks, and other indigenous Christians, at the hands of the Ottoman and Nationalist Turks.

Nearly a million Greeks were killed, while millions more were uprooted from their ancestral homelands in Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace as part of the Turks’ campaign of ethnic cleansing of its Christian populations. The Genocide also annihilated Armenian and Assyrian Christians.

This tragic event, the first Genocide of the 20th century, has been kept silent for 100 years. The voices of those martyred will no longer be silent.

DECEMBER 3, 2022
6 PM RECEPTION | 7 PM SCREENING

Q & A WITH PETER LAMBRINATOS, FILM DIRECTOR, AND SPIRO LAMBRINATOS, PRODUCER AND
GEORGE MAVROPOULOS, PRESIDENT, ASIA MINOR AND PONTOS HELLENIC RESEARCH CENTER

JIM GIANOPULOS FAMILY THEATER, ST. SOPHIA GREEK ORTHODOX CATHEDRAL 1324 S. Normandie Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90006

‘Wonders of Azerbaijan’ film was made with BP funding and the help of the country’s controversial ruling Aliyev family
By James Dowsett,

The BBC has been accused of ‘whitewashing’ the Azerbaijani dictatorship after broadcasting a film made with the support of the country’s controversial ruling family – and sponsored by UK oil and gas giant BP.

Audiences tuning into BBC World News in August were promised that they would discover “how Azerbaijan’s oil wealth enabled the capital Baku to flourish” and “gain the reputation of being the ‘Paris of the East’” in the BP-sponsored ‘Wonders of Azerbaijan’ film.

BP spent £300,000 on the film, which was made by UK production company SandStone Global with support from a foundation and a media centre run by members of Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family. Broadcaster and historian Bettany Hughes, who co-founded SandStone, presented the film.

Emin Huseynov, an Azerbaijani journalist who fled political persecution in Azerbaijan in 2015, accused the BBC of “whitewashing a dictatorship” over the film.

The BBC has been accused of ‘whitewashing’ the Azerbaijani dictatorship after broadcasting a film made with the support of the country’s controversial ruling family – and sponsored by UK oil and gas giant BP.

Audiences tuning into BBC World News in August were promised that they would discover “how Azerbaijan’s oil wealth enabled the capital Baku to flourish” and “gain the reputation of being the ‘Paris of the East’” in the BP-sponsored ‘Wonders of Azerbaijan’ film.

BP spent £300,000 on the film, which was made by UK production company SandStone Global with support from a foundation and a media centre run by members of Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family. Broadcaster and historian Bettany Hughes, who co-founded SandStone, presented the film.

Emin Huseynov, an Azerbaijani journalist who fled political persecution in Azerbaijan in 2015, accused the BBC of “whitewashing a dictatorship” over the film.

Husyenov, who was the subject of an award-winning 2006 BBC documentary which followed pro-democracy youth activists in Azerbaijan, told openDemocracy that the BBC had undergone “a shameful transformation and given the floor to one of the bloodiest and most corrupt regimes in the world.”

He also accused the BBC of being “passive” in its coverage of the human rights situation in Azerbaijan and questioned the lack of scrutiny over BP’s ties to the Aliyev regime.

The BBC told openDemocracy that the ‘Wonders of Azerbaijan’ film “is not a current affairs programme”.

“The wider geopolitical story of the region has been reported on extensively by BBC News services,” a spokesperson said.

Chris Garrard, from the arts campaign group Culture Unstained, told openDemocracy that media sponsorship arrangements such as BP’s “legitimise” fossil fuel companies as they continue to invest in new oil and gas infrastructure, rather than trying to meet net-zero goals.

Given the Azerbaijani regime’s track record of human rights abuses, the BBC film’s “positive cultural perspective on Azerbaijan” worked to “BP’s advantage”, Garrard said.

The film also implicitly promoted Azerbaijan’s claims to Shusha, a city in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh that Azerbaijan seized from Armenian forces in the Second Karabakh War in 2020. Azerbaijan now wants to turn the region into a ‘green energy zone’ – with BP’s help.

Under its so-called ‘contract of the century’, BP is the largest foreign corporate investor in resource-rich Azerbaijan.

It has long faced criticism from human rights and climate activists for its ties to the ruling Aliyev regime, which has been accused of “electoral fraud”, the silencing of dissenting voices and benefiting disproportionately from Azerbaijan’s oil and gas wealth.

“BP needs to keep the [Azerbaijani] government onside and this [film] is a low-cost way of doing it,” said campaigner James Marriott, co-author of Crude Britannia: How Oil Shaped a Nation.

BP told openDemocracy it aims to work for the “effective and responsible” development of the Caspian Sea’s energy resources for the benefit of Azerbaijan and the company.

It added that it has a net zero ambition and is working to decarbonise operations and develop renewable energy in Azerbaijan.

“We do not support individuals or political groups in any country,” a BP spokesperson told openDemocracy.

A BBC spokesperson said: “Hosting advertising and sponsorship outside of the UK, which is clearly labeled as such and is completely separate to our editorial output, allows us to invest in the BBC’s world-class journalism, which provides independent and impartial news across all topics, including climate change, the energy crisis and geopolitics.”

Curious travellers

BBC World News aired the two-part programme to its viewers outside the UK over a week in August – the same week that British audiences saw the BBC broadcast extensive coverage of the energy crisis and soaring household fuel bills.

Ads aimed at the “curious, eco-conscious traveller” were shown alongside the BP-sponsored film, as part of a brand deal between BBC Global News (one of the BBC’s commercial subsidiaries) and Azerbaijan’s official tourist board.

The BBC’s ‘Wonders of Azerbaijan’ film is part of a wider editorial series, also presented by Bettany Hughes, which explores areas of natural, artistic and cultural interest around the world.

The BBC licensed the content for the two-part programme from Hughes’s production company, SandStone Global. The BBC edited the material, but the copyright remains with SandStone. The production itself was funded by BP, whose sponsorship was made clear on screen when the programme aired.

Each of the two episodes was broadcast globally five times in late August, flanked by travel ads for Azerbaijan. It was not broadcast in the UK.

A representative of SandStone Global told openDemocracy that it was “standard practice” for production companies to get support from “local organisations” for on-location services.

Baku Media Centre provided logistics support to SandStone, while the Heydar Aliyev Foundation helped the UK company secure filming permits and access to unique heritage sites, the representative said.

The Baku Media Centre is run by Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev’s youngest daughter, Arzu Aliyeva. It works closely with the family-run foundation.

SandStone’s representative said: “[The organisations’ involvement] does not amount to editorial influence, as all decisions relating to our productions are made by the SandStone Global team.” Arzu Aliyeva was not personally involved in the production process, they added.

The BBC spokesperson said: “Whilst the original programme was not made by the BBC, the BBC alone has full editorial control over everything broadcast on its channel, in line with its robust editorial guidelines.”

BP supported the programme as a “contribution to Azerbaijan’s global promotion” in partnership with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, named after the former president, who led the country both before and after it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Heydar Aliyev was succeeded in 2003, after ten years of rule, by his son, the current autocratic president Ilham Aliyev.

The foundation is chaired by Ilham’s wife Mehriban Aliyeva, who is also the country’s vice president.

The Heydar Aliyev Foundation is tasked with promoting Azerbaijan’s image abroad, including by advancing the government position over Nagorno-Karabakh. But government critics say this work extends to diverting attention from the regime’s relentless crackdown on dissent and its systemic corruption.

“The foundation was set up by the ruling family to whitewash Azerbaijan’s image,” Arzu Geybullayeva, an Azerbaijani journalist living in exile, told openDemocracy. She added: “It can by no means be described as independent of the state.”

The Heydar Aliyev Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.

Speaking at a launch event for the film in Baku in September, presenter Bettany Hughes said: “I understand history not through politics… I don’t get involved in politics at all.

“But I do go to places which have been extraordinary in culture. So it was exceptional for me to get access to places which when I came last time I couldn’t go to because there was too much conflict there.”

Disputed territory

Hughes was speaking about Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognised as Azerbaijani territory – but had been under ethnic Armenian control since the early 1990s.

That was until 2020, when Azerbaijan started a 44-day war to take control of part of the disputed territory – as Ilham Aliyev himself recently admitted. Thousands were killed in the fighting as Armenian forces attempted to protect it.

Indeed, the BBC series featured a segment where Bettany Hughes travelled to the city of Shusha, in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan seized the city in November 2020 as part of its brutal military offensive. Prior to that, Shusha – known as Shushi to Armenians – had been in the hands of ethnic Armenians since the first Nagorno-Karabakh war three decades earlier.

Azerbaijan has now declared Shusha a “cultural capital”, and major efforts are under way to restore Azerbaijani culture in the city. The Heydar Aliyev Foundation is leading restoration works in Shusha. Some of these works featured in the BBC programme, including a sequence shot inside a reconstructed Soviet-era mausoleum to the 18th-century Azerbaijani poet and statesman Vagif. The monument fell to ruin when the city was under Armenian control.

Speaking in Shusha in June 2022, BP’s regional president Gary Jones saidNagorno-Karabakh had the country’s “best solar and geothermal resources” – making it a “perfect opportunity for a fully net zero system”. BP is planning a solar power plant in the city of Jabrayil, which Azerbaijan regained control over during the 2020 war.

‘Wonders of Azerbaijan’, which did not address Armenia’s connections to Shusha or Nagorno-Karabakh’s bitterly contested history, was broadcast in the last week of August.

A fortnight later, Azerbaijani forces made further incursions into Armenian territory – the worst escalation in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict since the 2020 war.

BP’s Jones took to the stage at the Baku premiere of the film in late September to praise the “unwavering support of the [Azerbaijani] government” for his company and its co-venturers’ operations in the country.

Jones also spoke of the “joint effort” that went into creating the documentary. He thanked the Heydar Aliyev Foundation for its support and paid personal homage to the president’s daughter, Arzu Aliyeva, and to the Baku Media Centre she heads, “for their outstanding technical support” on the production.

Tourism campaign

This isn’t the first time BP has collaborated with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, or that the foundation has cropped up on the BBC.

Last year, BBC StoryWorks, the in-house content studio for the commercial BBC Global News, ran a separate tourism-focused campaign for Azerbaijan to mark the 30th anniversary of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.

The campaign included a paid-for advertorial that invited readers to “discover more” about Azerbaijan by following a link to an external website run by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. The ‘Azerbaijan’ portal claims (among other things) that Azerbaijan’s current president Ilham Aliyev “has always focused on ensuring a fuller provision of human rights and freedoms in the country”. It also contains information about the so-called “Armenian problem”.

Azerbaijani officials have a long record of using dehumanising language and imagery about Armenians, including opening a “war park” last year containing weapons, armour and vehicles seized from Armenian forces and wax figures of Armenians – as the BBC reported in the UK.

The link was removed after openDemocracy contacted the BBC for comment.

BP, meanwhile, has signed a cooperation agreement with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation to jointly implement some of its social investment projects.

Previous joint projects have included sponsored films, such as ‘The Last Session’, a 2018 documentary commemorating the birth of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic – the short-lived independent state that was ended by Soviet invasion in 1920. BP spent $320,000 on the project, which was organised by the Baku Media Centre. Arzu Aliyeva was credited as the film’s executive producer.

In its statement to openDemocracy, BP said that its social investment policy in Azerbaijan – and elsewhere in the region – was “in line with our group sustainability framework.”

The company said that it has supported over 100 communities in Azerbaijan through educational and cultural initiatives, including projects aimed at building opportunities for advancing the energy transition.

Source: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/bbc-accused-of-whitewashing-autocratic-azerbaijan-in-bp-sponsored-film/