04/11/2024
Nagorno Karabakh was a small Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan.
Autonomous since 1921, it became an independent presidential republic after an internal referendum in 1991. Armenians have always perceived Karabakh as their place of origin, the place where it all began, the cradle of their culture,
a bastion of the Christian religion in an area of total Muslim ownership, with its thousands of churches and fortified monasteries. Today Nagorno Karabakh no longer exists. After 9 months of forced isolation of the enclave caused by Azerbaijan, that resulted in a devastating humanitarian crisis, the people living in Karabakh had to abandon their homes under Azerbaijani bombardment and take refuge in Armenia on September 25, 2023. The region was emptied, churches razed to the ground, cemeteries destroyed, homes looted. All trace of what was Nagorno Karabakh has been erased. On December 31, 2023, the nation officially disappeared from the international scene. Its existence has even been erased from local history books. Flora Avamenesyan is 67 years old and worked for 40 years in Martakert as a pharmacist. She had six children and fled with them from her home in Karabakh under shelling on 25 September 2023 to take refuge in a bunker. Since then, no one has been able to return home and they had to leave with only the clothes on their backs. She had a photo of herself as a young woman in her bag and that is the only thing she has left of her entire past in Karabakh. She would like to return to her home with all her heart but knows that she will die in Armenia and cannot be buried with her loved ones in Karabakh. She now lives with her two youngest children in a dilapidated mansion in Hrazdan.