2023-10-07

Supporting forcefully expelled refugees from Arsakh

Writing in English hoping of more international readers interested in the topic.

The tragedy

Artsakh / Nagorno Karabakh has fallen, it’s a big tragedy for the Armenian nation, comparable to the Armenian genocide in 1915, and a big failure for our governments throughout 35 years. A new war is on the horizon. But this is not a political post, though you may find some political context.

Situation

More than 100,000 people fled their homes. And now they are all around Armenia. In Stepanavan we have around 500 people at the moment. I will share some photos and stories from what we did last week.

Imagine you were forced to leave your home in a car with 7 people what will you take with you?

Stories

Old couple

An Old couple said that they couldn’t bring any clothing or anything because their car was blown to pieces by an Azerbaijan rocket.

Refugee twice

A woman came, a family of 5. She told me that she was a refugee from Shushi in 2020 Azerbaijan occupied it and till now lived in Stepanakert, and that they were lied to. She said, “We were told that we could return to Artsakh. Russian peacekeepers were going to protect us, while in reality they stood and watched how Armenians were massacred”.

Baby that was born during the war

There was a child who was in slippers. His mother found him a pair of shoes. She told us “He is 3, he was born during “44 days” war around 3 years ago, and recently he celebrated his 3rd birthday during the recent war and now we are refugees”. This woman had 7 children and they all fit in a single small Opel cara.

Family of 13

Some people came with families of 13, having 9 children, parents, and grandparents. Unbelievable.

UAV above the house

An old woman told me “We were from Stepanakert, the Azerbaijan striking drone was going above our head 6 times in an hour.”.

Aid

Till today we helped around 140 people. We couldn’t gather humanitarian aid in a public space because of “municipality restrictions” so we decided to do it in our home.

Hygiene products

Many refugees are staying in Hotels which are providing some food and shelter but that’s about it. We have decided to buy some hygiene products to help them with at the beginning.

Food

Some stayed at home and didn’t have food yet.

Clothing

Some didn’t have proper clothing. We gathered volunteers to help to filter unusable clothing and sort by age and type.

School supplies

Kids need to go to school so we tried to help with that also.

Everywhere is pain, we need to learn the lessons to move on and become stronger. Thanks for tuning in.

During this time we spent around 2000$ on this, which we gathered from personal budget friends, and mostly family. 5 volunteers helped us a lot during this couple of days one of them was a girl from Artsakh.

Thanks to all participants!❤️