Azerbaijan Arrests Former Top Karabakh Minister as Exodus Tops 50,000

Ethnic Armenians wait to be evacuated from Stepanakert on September 26, 2023. (Photo by Siranush Sargsyan / AFP)
Ethnic Armenians wait to be evacuated from Stepanakert on September 26, 2023. (Photo by Siranush Sargsyan / AFP)
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Azerbaijan Arrests Former Top Karabakh Minister as Exodus Tops 50,000

Ethnic Armenians wait to be evacuated from Stepanakert on September 26, 2023. (Photo by Siranush Sargsyan / AFP)
Ethnic Armenians wait to be evacuated from Stepanakert on September 26, 2023. (Photo by Siranush Sargsyan / AFP)

A former head of the breakaway ethnic Armenian government in Nagorno-Karabakh was arrested by Azerbaijan on Wednesday as he tried to escape into Armenia as part of an exodus of tens of thousands of people that has triggered a humanitarian crisis.

Ruben Vardanyan, a billionaire banker and philanthropist, headed Karabakh's separatist government between November 2022 and February 2023.

His wife Veronika Zonabend said on his Telegram channel that he had been arrested while trying to flee as part of a mass departure by ethnic Armenians after Azerbaijan took back control of Karabakh in a lightning offensive last week.

Azerbaijan's border service said he had been taken to the capital Baku and handed over to other state agencies.

Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated mostly by ethnic Armenians who broke away in the 1990s in the first of two wars there since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijan says it wants to peacefully reintegrate the Armenians and will guarantee their civic rights, including to practice their Christian religion. It says no one is forcing them to leave.

But given the bloody history between the two sides, ethnic Armenians are fleeing in fear, abandoning their homes and boarding cars and trucks that have jammed the snaking mountain road that leads to Armenia.

Karabakh authorities said more than 50,000 had left so far, out of an estimated ethnic Armenian population of 120,000.

Azerbaijan rejects Armenian accusations of ethnic cleansing, but images of tens of thousands of desperate people on the move have provoked widespread international alarm.

The European Union said it was sending more humanitarian aid "in solidarity with those who had no choice but to flee" - a significant change from an earlier statement where it referred to people who had "decided to flee".

UN special rapporteur Morris Tidball-Binz said Azerbaijan must "promptly and independently investigate alleged or suspected violations of the right to life reported in the context of its latest military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh".

Germany added its voice to US calls for Azerbaijan to allow international observers into Karabakh.

"What is needed now is transparency, and the eyes and ears of the international community on the spot," Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Mountain road

It was not clear on what grounds Vardanyan, the former Karabakh state minister, had been held, but Azerbaijan has signaled it will seek to prosecute some of the separatists.

"We have accused elements of the criminal regime and we will bring them to justice," President Ilham Aliyev said last week, without naming anyone or specifying any crime. He described the Karabakh leadership as a "criminal junta" and a "den of poison".

During his short time in office, Azerbaijan had called Vardanyan an obstacle to peace. He had also fallen out with Armenia's prime minister over the role of Russian peacekeepers.

His wife Zonabend said she asked for people's "prayers and support for my husband's safe release".

Tens of thousands have been killed in wars over Karabakh since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, of which both Armenia and Azerbaijan were part.

Karabakh authorities said they lost at least 200 people in Azerbaijan's offensive last week. Baku said on Wednesday that 192 of its soldiers had been killed, and published their names and photographs. More than 50 were young men in their teens.

The mountain road that winds out of Karabakh towards Armenia has been choked for days, with many people sleeping in cars or searching for firewood to keep warm. The journey of just 77 km (48 miles) to the border was taking at least 30 hours.

"I left everything behind. I don't know what is in store for me. I have nothing. I don't want anything," Vera Petrosyan, a 70-year-old retired teacher, told Reuters.

Local authorities said at least 68 people had been killed, 105 were missing and nearly 300 were injured in a huge explosion at a fuel station in Karabakh on Monday. It was unclear what caused it.

Russia said its peacekeeping force in the region had evacuated more than 120 people by helicopter.

Armenia is angry that the Russian peacekeepers, in place since a 44-day war in 2020, did nothing to prevent Azerbaijan from launching its offensive, which swiftly forced the Karabakh leadership to agree to disband and disarm.

With Russia distracted by the war in Ukraine, the crisis has highlighted its waning ability to play the role of security guarantor in the Caucasus region, where Türkiye, Iran and the United States are competing with it for influence.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."